Music Educators: Working with Students who have Special Needs

Written by: Melissa Reinhardt, MSEd, MT-BC, Neurologic Music Therapist

I recently had the opportunity to present “Music for Children with Special Needs” to 2 groups of local elementary school music teachers about how to work with students who have special needs in the music classroom.
     Music educators are almost guaranteed to have students with special needs in their classroom due to inclusion with regular classroom related arts classes (e.g. music, art, PE, etc.)  Additionally, sometimes music educators also work within special services classrooms where all students have been identified as having special needs.  This can be challenging in itself, but even more so when music educators have not had any or very limited training in working with such students.  This is where a music therapist can help!  Music therapists are trained in adapting and creating musical experiences to persons of all ages and abilities; this ability to “adapt” is the key to working with ALL students.
      As defined in my presentation, adaptations do not change the learning objective, but change the learning outcome.  There are multiple ways of adapting music lessons to meet the needs of a variety of students.  Some examples are as follows:

1. Input:  vary the ways information is presented to students
2. Output: vary the ways students can demonstrate their understanding of the knowledge
3. Difficulty: adapt the skill level, problem type or rules on how the student may approach the lesson
4. Level of Assistance:  the amount of assistance give to the student to achieve success

This is a brief listing of possible adaptations that can be made in your classroom to help include everyone. If you are new to the profession and are looking for general resources, here are some links to books/articles that are a good place to start. 

• Music in Special Education:  Mary Adamek & Alice Ann Darrow 3rd Edition (2018) 
• ​Educational Benefits of Music in an Inclusive Classroom 
• ​Teaching Lessons to Children with Special Needs 

Finally, the links below are classroom materials that I use in music therapy and can be easily implemented into the music classroom:

• Color Coding 
• Movement Props    
• Adapted Instruments 
• Autism/Visual Aids
• ​Color Coded Melodies divided by genres, arranged by PMT Staff

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If you have any questions, please comment below!

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