Special Education

Special education provides pedagogical support for learning. It focuses on developing learning skills, finding one's own learning methods, learning various learning strategies, and strengthening self-esteem as a learner. By developing skills for learning how to learn, the ability to set goals, and trying out different learning methods, the learner's positive perception of themselves as a learner is supported.

Qridi is used in providing support for learning and school attendance at all three levels: general, intensified, and special support. Qridi also helps identify support needs and make visible the implementation of support in the school.

Differentiation is an approach to teaching that considers each student's individuality and special needs. The goal is to give every learner the opportunity to succeed and learn, regardless of their individual starting point. Learning a new concept may be easy and effortless for one student, while challenging and requiring various support measures for another.

Systematic and planned differentiated instruction can be integrated into teaching in a way that diverse learning solutions become a normal part of the classroom culture. Ideally, working in school is flexible, and not everyone needs to study things in the same way.

With Qridi, student learning can be supported in various ways.

Differentiation is possible with the "Participant Groups" feature in the class. With this feature, you can create different learning paths, goals, diaries, assessments, and exercises for individuals or groups of students, grouped according to their needs and the situation.

With the Task List feature, creating different learning paths is easy. Tasks are presented to the learner as clear task cards, and as they progress through the tasks, the task list is cleared. This helps the learner in self-regulation. Additionally, after completing each task, the learner provides feedback on how they felt about the task.

At the same time, the teacher gains an overview of the learners' progress. With a single glance, they can see who has submitted their tasks, what has been submitted, and how the learner felt about completing the task.

In some cases, a learner may have numerous absences, or their ability to participate in classroom learning within a large group may be compromised to the extent that studying progresses mainly from home. In such situations, completing comprehensive task sets is organized using the task list function, ensuring completion of grade level objectives.

The Assessment Train feature supports the structuring of individual learning content for young learners. Predefined Arviointijuna sets facilitate the breakdown of curriculum objectives and tracking progress in both individual and class levels. This makes it easier for special education teachers to plan individual support with classroom teachers for those who clearly need the most support in these objectives.

Read more about individualized learning plans (LINKKI) with Qridi (VSOP).

Self- and peer-assessments can keep in focus the goals that are important for the learner at any given time. Often in special education, there is an emphasis on systematically highlighting various goals related to study skills, values, or attitudes. Learners often pay attention to how their learning is progressing at the moment. Self-assessments help to reveal longer-term trends and the direction of development.

The older the child, the greater the value of peer assessment. Positive feedback from classmates, for example on group work, can shift attention to important successes. On the other hand, the ability to give and receive constructive feedback is important to practice in a safe group setting.

Regular parent surveys provide insight into aspects such as the workload of schoolwork and the progress of homework. Additionally, parents have the opportunity to monitor the student's development, assessments, goals, tasks, and journals from their own interface, as far as the teacher allows.

From the perspective of special education, the role of the journal often involves not only recording the learning process but also verbalizing one's own thoughts. It allows for the reflection on various aspects of daily work through text, audio clips, emojis, videos, and images. The journal can be created, for example, to record daily achievements, describe working phases, or serve as a vocabulary book for S2 students' own language.

Teachers have the opportunity to provide positive feedback to students with a low threshold, for example, for persistent effort, thus reinforcing the student's perception of their own strengths and successes.

There are several different ways to implement personal goals. It can be a pathway goal containing intermediate steps or sub-goals, or it can be a level-upward progress goal. Students can practice goal-setting with the teacher. They can create their own goals or they can be defined by the teacher. It's advisable to utilize Qridi's ready-made templates when creating goals.

The idea is to keep the goal visible and help the student regularly reflect on how they have progressed towards the goal or how their work today relates to the goal. A graph is created from each checkpoint, which can be revisited. Rarely does anyone achieve the goal perfectly every day. The idea is to set a goal that is important for personal development. For example, waiting for a turn to speak may be easier on one day and very challenging on another. By observing longer-term trends and identifying what factors contributed to a successful day, more successes will follow. By persistently practicing towards their goal, it becomes evident that progress is being made, and at some point, it can be acknowledged that the skill or behavior has been mastered.

The Quizzes feature provides an opportunity for repetitive practice. The student can practice content that requires repetitive practice, such as multiplication tables or language question words, at their own pace. The student will know how the exercises are progressing when using pre-checked exercise templates.

The Quizzes feature is especially used to support language and mathematics learning, but there are ready-made contents available for many other subjects as well. It's also easy for the teacher to create targeted exercises for topics where they need test/exercise data to assess the level of students' skills.

It's also worth exploring the different perspectives and functions of various subjects on our website in more detail. (Linkit)