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Special needs and the need for fun: this approach worked as [the students] taught each other and communicated in a positive way.

Article Excerpt
During the first few days of school I asked students in one of my classes to tell something they liked to do, name something they would like to know more about that would help them later in life, and what they would like to do in the future. This gave me some ideas of what to incorporate into the class to help them to be more successful in later life.

The class I refer to in this article is a "special needs" class. In my other classes, I teach only seventh grade students. In the special needs, or "SPED" class, I have sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students, and they have the most difficulty of any students in the school in grasping new concepts. These same students, however, are also the ones who best appreciate what you do for them and can be the most caring and sharing. Their behavior is usually better than the other students. They are the students who stop by the classroom during passing period and tell you about something special that happened to them at school or home or just to say, "I hope your day is going great today."

Some students in the SPED class require their own aide, and therefore I had 19 students and four aides in this class. There was no way I could have helped these students succeed to the level they did without the help of our outstanding aides. They cared about the students and wanted them to have success. They also kept the students from having any serious problems in getting along with others in the class and performing their assigned tasks.

One of the first topics to arise was...

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