Blog: The Missing Piece

Characteristics of Students with Learning Disabilities While most everyone experiences minor learning problems from time to time, students with learning disabilities experience them much of the time, especially during their school years. Depending on how one defines a learning disability, which can vary from state to state, estimates of the prevalence of learning disorders range from 2-10%. About 5% of students in the United States public schools are certified as having a learning disorder. There are some problems students with learning disabilities experience. Because there’s a wide range of variation among this population, no one student may experience all of these difficulties all the time. He or she may experience any combination of them at different times. Difficulty learning basic reading, writing, spelling, math, and/or language skills despite average to superior intelligence Problems pronouncing words Difficulty gripping the pencil and writing neatly Difficulty generalizing information and transferring it from one situation to the next Inflexibility and rigidity Problems learning to tell time Problems managing time Trouble finishing homework and following directions Short attention span Confusion with left and right Clumsiness Impulsivity Distractibility Disorganization Social immaturity Over-reacting, heightened sensitivity Low frustration tolerance The federal government defines a specific learning disability as: …a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, which may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations. The term includes such conditions as perceptual handicaps, brian injury, minimal brian dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. The term does not include children who have learning problems which are primarily the result of visual, hearing or motor handicaps, of mental retardation, of emotional disturbance or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage (DOE, 1995). Part of this means that, in spite of their average to above average intelligence, students with learning disabilities aren’t learning at a rate that's suggested by their intellectual potential. There’s a significant discrepancy between their potential and their actual achievement. These learning problems aren’t due to such factors as a visual or hearing impairment, mental retardation, or emotional problems. For instance, let’s say a student has an intelligence quotient, or I.Q., of 100. Since this is in the average range of intelligence, we expect her to handle grade level work fairly well. What if she doesn’t, though? What if she’s in fifth grade and reading on a third grade level and spelling on a second grade level? If she doesn’t have visual or hearing impairment, or a severe emotion, psychological or environmental problem, why isn’t she performing grade level work? What’s the reason for this discrepancy between her ability and her actual achievement? While no one is completely sure of the exact causes of learning disabilities, we do know that students with learning disabilities have trouble in one or more of these areas – interpreting what they perceive, developing receptive and expressive language, remembering what they learn, and paying attention. Learning disabilities are often called perceptual disabilities. More specifically, a perceptual difficulty is a difficulty in processing what one sees, hears, and/or feels. A student with learning disabilities may have good eyesight, acute hearing, and good use of his muscles; however, his brain doesn’t efficiently process or interpret the information received from his senses. A learning disability can include memory problems. Some people accurately perceive and interpret what they see, hear, or feel, but they don’t remember it. Determining if a student has a memory or perceptual problem can be challenging. Students who don’t accurately perceive and interpret information will obviously have problems remembering it. The information doesn’t make sense to begin with. Some students, however, accurately perceive the information. They might understand most everything their teachers tell them, but they can’t remember it. Memory problems are often specific. Some students can’t easily remember the letters and numbers they read and write, but can easily remember a room design, a person’s eye color, or a location on a map. Learning disabilities range in severity. Some students have mild disabilities where their ability to learn is only slightly impaired. Others have moderate to severe disabilities. These students, without proper treatment and support, can experience significant learning handicaps. We perceive, interpret, and remember information through our five senses – sight, hearing, touch/movement, taste, and smell. The three senses that have the greatest impact on school success are sight, hearing, and touch/movement. Our sight is our visual sense, hearing is our auditory sense, and touch and movement are our kinesthetic sense. To better understand how learning disabilities can interfere with learning, over the next few weeks, we will take a closer look at the problems some students have in perceiving, interpreting, and/or remembering information from their visual, auditory, and kinesthetic modalities, and how these problems practically impact learning.

J ust like physical exercise, your mind needs some exercise too. Playing sudoku actually exercises your brain extensively. This is why we incorporate these number puzzles into our brain intervention training at Keeping Pace! Sudoku is a logic puzzle played on a 9×9 grid where the goal is to fill in the missing numbers so that each row, each column, and each 3×3 box contains the numbers 1 through 9 exactly once. The puzzle starts with some numbers already filled in, and players use reasoning and logic, rather than guessing, to determine where the remaining numbers belong.

Does your child avoid reading by stalling, taking bathroom breaks, fidgeting, or emotional breakdowns? Do they flip words like “saw/was” or maybe skip small words like “the” and “and” when reading aloud? If so, it's not because they’re lazy or don’t care. These are signs your child is struggling. When a student is struggling with literacy, they often feel like they are constantly failing as others around them succeed. Self-esteem decreases and avoidance or over-focusing becomes the only option available to them. Oftentimes these students develop ADHD-like symptoms due to the difficulty of learning and so teachers easily blame the student’s struggles on attention. The problem is, this fundamentally misses the root of the issue: the inefficiency of learning and more specifically decoding. There are 4 common areas of weakness that impact a student’s ability to learn to decode. Weak phonological skills - phonemic analysis skills that interfere with decoding Rapid naming skills - a processing speed issue Short term visual and/or auditory memory difficulties Visual perceptual weakness These areas of weakness are cognitive in nature and impact a child’s academic skill to decode. Therefore, we must take a cognitive approach when working with schoolwork and homework to target these areas and improve decoding skills. There are 3 activities struggling readers can use to improve these areas of weakness and can be applied to any reading material whether it be schoolwork, a library book, or the back of a cereal box. These are: Echo Tap, Spell Read, and Neurological Impress Read. As a disclaimer , these three procedures alone will not cure a learning disability and should be used to support intervention or classroom/homework material. If your child struggles with reading, please seek intervention now. Progress becomes harder after 3rd grade. Don’t hesitate. These activities are something you can start doing now to set them up for success.