ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces aquatics skills teaching and presents strategies to help the physical educator, generalist, and adapted specialist alike teach swimming and related water activities safely and successfully to students with disabilities. Aquatic activities provide all students, with and without disability, opportunity to enjoy mobility freedom often not attainable in any other environment. Among children with disabilities, swimming provides unique opportunities to develop fitness, motor fitness, social skills, and self-confidence. Older pools will require adaptations prior to becoming acceptable for use with young children, especially children who have disabilities. The development of fundamental swimming skills, similar to fundamental skills development on dry land, tends to be hierarchical. When using any flotation device, the teacher must be certain the device fits and is secured properly every time it is used. When a teacher/coach or administrator determines whether participation is likely to be safe, she/he must equally consider safety needs of participants who do not have disabilities.
