Hands-On Activities to Keep Students With Disabilities Engaged in K-12 Classrooms

Background

Student engagement in classroom activities is a critical and central component of effective interventions for students with disabilities and is vital for our nation’s development. Student engagement simply refers to student’s participation in learning activities or how much is the student involved in the classroom task. The factors related to engagement relates to the aspects of environment (types and quality of learning opportunities provided to students), student’s ability and skills to participate in the classroom task, and on the student’s investment and interest in those opportunities.

Classroom environment and careful selection of hands-on activities plays an important role in promoting student engagement which is a critical factor in learning and academic gains for students with or without disability. How conducive is the classroom environment to support positive learning in student’s, determines how much is the student engaged in the educational environment? Selection of hands-on activities need careful planning by the teachers, who executes effective evidence-based strategies, and crafts highly engaged hands on activities, considering the individualized needs of student’s in the classroom.