FORMATION OF MATHEMATICAL SKILLS IN PUPILS OF SPECIAL SCHOOL

Successful completion of the work of forming the mathematical imagination of special school students, which is a complex and multifaceted process, requires significant efforts on the part of both teachers and pupils. The paper states that the success of the process of forming mathematical skills is ensured by careful work on improving the content of the tasks and the appropriateness of the selection of exercises for the specified category of pupils. According to many educators (Kolupayeva A. A., Hovland K., Schnider V., Hrenova V. V.), the teaching of mathematics has an important place in the general system of educational work of a special school. Successful learning of mathematical concepts by children with special educational needs is a major determinant of their success in all other school subjects. The paper emphasizes that violations of higher forms of cognitive activity in schoolchildren with intellectual disabilities lead to significant difficulties in mastering educational material. A special school is an educational institution designed for the intellectual potential of these students, the training in which gives them the opportunity to adapt to life in society after graduation. Taking into account the difficulty of acquiring knowledge by such pupils, the amount of educational material is reduced as compared to a comprehensive school. At the same time, it corresponds to a logically complete system, which allows to use the acquired mathematical knowledge, skills and abilities directly in the process of work and life in the social environment. All mathematical concepts and skills, which are studied by students of a special school, are integral and complete in nature. The content of the mathematics curriculum has a clearly defined corrective-developmental orientation. This means that every method, every technique that a teacher uses in a math lesson, should be aimed not only at forming mathematical knowledge, skills and abilities in pupils with intellectual disabilities, but also at overcoming physical and mental developmental disabilities: attention, memory, thinking, speech, emotional-volatile sphere, motor skills, etc. A peculiarity of the arrangement of the material in the program is its "preparation" in advance, the presence of preparatory exercises that slowly prepare students to the formation of one or another concept. This allows the teacher to organize a system of preparatory exercises in order to study the most difficult topics. The curriculum in mathematics provides the principle of availability of the material, its correspondence to the content and methods of teaching this discipline to the age, typological and individual cognitive abilities of students with intellectual disabilities. This principle is ensured by the fact that the teacher gradually moves from easy to complex, from concrete to abstract material, taking into account the cognitive abilities of schoolchildren and paying their attention on those changes that occur in them during the corrective-developmental influence. It allows children with persistent intellectual disabilities to better absorb, understand, remember and reproduce appropriate learning material at the right time. An individual approach is a necessary condition for the organization of the process of learning mathematics: students who are better at keeping up with time need additional, more difficult tasks, and for students who, for any reason, fall behind in mathematics, the program provides individual, easier tasks. There's a special section in this program that defines the minimum level of knowledge that transfers pupils from one grade to the next. Taking into account the heterogeneity of the composition of the class, as well as the different possibilities of learning mathematical material, the program indicates the need for differentiation of educational requirements. In general, it determines the optimal amount of knowledge, skills and abilities available to most schoolchildren. But practice and specific studies show there are students in almost every class who consistently lag behind their peers in math. ‘’Differentiated approach means that students are taught separately according to their inherent differences. As mentioned by I.G. Yeremenko, differentiated learning occurs when groups of students with different levels of cognitive development learn in parallel: each group studies at its own pace according to a separate program’’. Taking this into account, the program in mathematics is designed for I and II departments: pupils with a higher level of cognitive ability follow the program of the first department, and pupils with a lower level of cognitive ability follow the program of the second department. The program of the second department contains significantly less material. It is a bit simplified, without violating the logic of the discipline. For pupils who are lagging behind in learning mathematics, the program provides simplification by section in each class, and allows the teacher to vary the requirements for them depending on their individual abilities. Thus, the formation of mathematical skills of children with special educational needs should be based on their activities, as well as on the principles, content and teaching methods defined in the current system of teaching mathematics. Special correctional work aimed at activating the communication skills of schoolchildren with special needs should contribute to the successful correction of their intellectual defects and the intensification of general development.