Digital photos have massive potential in developing the reading and writing skills of children with special needs. For deaf children specifically, new words can be taught by connecting the word to a digital picture. Phonetics challenge many special-needs children, but words can be better understood when connected to pictures. Journals, storybooks, newsletters, flash cards are just some learning aids that can be created with digital photos about the child’s life and environment.
Studies show that 80 per cent of children are predominantly visual learners. This makes digital photos the ideal visual learning aid for children, who learn best when content is relevant to their own life. A child’s experiences can be recorded with a digital camera, and the images used to reinforce new concepts in language and reading lessons. Verb structures can be taught by photographing child/ren in action and using the pictures to build sentences around a new word.
In the classroom, teachers can use a photo of something they are teaching to explain a new concept. The photo can either be used for one-to-one teaching with a laptop or PC, or projected to the whole class using a digital projector. Deaf children in particular have difficulty learning their classmates’ names as these are not heard on a daily basis. One solution is to take a photo of each child in the class and label these photos on a big poster for the classroom.
If you already use digital cameras to teach your children, we’d love to hear from you!
