STUDENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES
The American National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities (NJCLD) which is
composed of several professional organizations issued the following definition in 1989:
Learning disabilities is a generic term that refers to a heterogeneous group of
disorders manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of
listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning or mathematical abilities.
These disorders are intrinsic to the individual and presumed to be due to central
nervous system dysfunction.
Learning disabilities may appear across the life span.
Problems in self-regulatory behavior, social perception and social interaction may
exist in learning disabilities but do not themselves constitute a learning disability.
Three Criteria in Determining the Presence of Learning Disabilities
The following criteria must be present when assessing children to have learning
disabilities:
1. Severe discrepancy between the child's potential and actual achievement.
Learning disabilities is present when mental ability tests and standardized
achievement test results show discrepancy between general mental ability and
achievement in school.
There are pieces of evidence of a discrepancy score of two or greater than two in
intellectual ability and achievement in one or more of the following areas: oral
expression, listening comprehension, reading comprehension, written
expression, basic reading skills, mathematics calculation, and reasoning.
Children may show learning difficulties that are minor or temporary, in which case
a true learning disability is not present.
2. Exclusion or absence of mental retardation, sensory impairment and other
disabilities
The exclusion criterion means that the child has significant problems that cannot
be explained by mental retardation, sensory impairment like low vision,
blindness, hearing impairment, emotional disturbance or lack of opportunity to
learn.
3. Need for special education services
Teaching the child with learning disabilities involves strategies that are unique,
uncommon and unusual quality.
The strategies supplement the organizational and instructional procedures used
with majority of the children in regular schools,
This criterion is meant to keep children who have not had the opportunity to learn
from being classified as learning disabled.
Learning and Behavior Characteristics of Children with Learning Disabilities
Learning and Behavior Characteristics of Children with Learning Disabilities
Students with learning difficulties are most likely to have difficulties in the
following areas of school learning:
General difficulties
Difficulties in understanding and following directions
Difficulties remembering things (short-term and long-term memory problems)
A short attention span & being easily distracted
Being overactive or impulsive
Difficulties organizing work and time; difficulties getting started’
Lack of confidence, reluctant to attempt difficult or new tasks
Difficulties with tasks that require rapid responses
Lack of effective learning strategies
Difficulties in Reading
Dyslexia (which is a Latin word meaning can’t read!) – if reading is the only
area that the student has difficulties with.
Particular areas of need are likely to be:
Difficulties remembering sight words and patterns
Difficulties identifying the separate sounds in spoken words
Difficulties blending sounds
Confuses similar letters and words (e.g., b and d, man and name)
Difficulties decoding words (ie., working out how written words sound and
what they might mean)
Difficulties in mathematics
Dyscalculia (meaning can’t do math) – if mathematics is the only area of
difficulty,
Students with mathematics difficulties often have:
Difficulty with counting and sorting groups of objects to match numbers
Difficulty remembering number facts (eg, addition facts, times, tables)
Difficulties with arithmetic operations.
Difficulties in writing
Many children have difficulty forming letters, holding a pencil correctly, tracing
shapes with fingers, recognizing shapes, copying from the blackboard, drawing,
and so on. In many cases, this is the only particular difficulty that the student has.
Teachers need to be careful not to assume that students with poor handwriting
have other difficulties. Teachers also need to judge whether the student has
difficulty understanding what or how to write, or physically forming the letters.
Effective teachers make sure that they find out which students are having
difficulties and they try to respond to their needs as early as possible. Effective
teachers do all they can to stop small problems becoming very big problems that
are much harder to address.
The longer the time that students experience difficulties at school, the greater the
effort that is required to eliminate or reduce the problem.
Teaching strategies
Major considerations for teaching students with learning difficulties are:
Use direct, explicit teaching to teach reading, writing, spelling and mathematics.
They can already do, move ahead gradually, introducing harder material very
carefully.
Monitor students' work regularly and carefully so that you know when students
are experiencing difficulties and you can respond quickly.
Teach skills in practical, meaningful ways, and use concrete materials frequently
Give plenty of attention to phonics and decoding strategies in reading, as well as
plenty of attention to phonemic awareness skills (rhyming games, games
involving swapping beginning sounds, ending sounds and middle sounds in
words, clapping out the number of sounds and syllables in words). However, if a
student has a hearing impairment, place more emphasis on sight-word
approaches to reading as students with a hearing impairment may not be able to
hear some sounds in words, even at close range Provide plenty of practice and
revision of skills and knowledge.
Use peer tutors and parent helpers to provide extra instruction and practice.
Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
(ADHD)
Are conditions in which children exhibit significant differences in the ability to pay
attention and to engage in active work compared to their normal peers. These
children show lack of control in saying things, cannot wait for their turn and often
engage in dangerous activities.
ADD and ADHD are common characteristics of children with learning disabilities.
There is Attention Deficit when the child is not able to attend to a task expected
of his or her age and grade level.
Hyperactivity is present when the child engages in high rates of purposeless
movement.
Impulsivity is displayed through inappropriate behavior.
The essential feature of ADD/ADHD is a persistent pattern of a combination of
inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity that is more frequent and severe,
maladaptive and inconsistent with the developmental level of the child.
Six or more of the eight symptoms or hyperactivity-impulsivity hyperactivity:
Often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat
Often leaves seat in classroom or in other situations in which remaining seated is
expected.
Often runs about or climbs excessively in situations in which it is inappropriate. In
adolescents and adults this is expression of subjective feelings of restlessness.
Often has difficulty playing or engaging in leisure activities quietly.
is often on the go or often acts as if driven by a motor.
Impulsivity:
Often blurts out answers before questions have been completed.
Often has difficulty waiting turn.
Often interrupts or intrudes on others, butts into conversations or games.
Some symptoms are present before age 7.
