Since 2014, more and more children with autism have been going to regular education. This is a good development, but it asks a lot from the child, the class and the teachers. How do we ensure that neurodiverse children feel more connected in regular education?
When a conflict occurs, the intervention is often placed only with the neurodiverse child and their supervisor. As a result, the neurodiverse child is further removed from the classroom and makes the child even more 'special', instead of being well integrated into the classroom.
Our research showed that, in practice, the attention automatically goes more to the child who behaves differently. This underlines the disparity between neurotypical and neurodiverse children. By focusing only on the neurodiverse child, a valuable learning moment for everyone involved is lost and adverse dynamics remain.
A fun and quirky game that challenges the whole class to train their empathy, work together and support each other when someone needs it.
What is your loco? We are going to discover it with the game Pocoloco. We play it together with the class. The class is divided into four groups. Everyone gets a special challenge; one person is blind, another deaf and someone else can't move. In the first round, two teams play against each other. The other two teams watch. They have to solve a puzzle, simultaneously discovering what their challenge is and how they can contribute to the solution. This first round is chaos! Next, it's the turn of the other two teams. They were able to watch and the teams from round one can give tips on how best to approach this. That is already smoother. In round three, they are really busy, they know where they stand and have learned to communicate about what they need, which helps. Finally, everyone fills out a worksheet and explains what their 'loco' is, what they need in it, and what the class could do to help them. In this way, the class jointly trains its empathy, learns to accept each other and communicate when things get equally difficult.
