STUDENTS WITH

LEARNING DISABILITIES
(GROUP THREE)
Reporter: Reporter:
Morallos, Krizza Lacbayen, Angelica
Jurilla, Aivee Patano, Devine Grace
Lego, Jesther Ramos, Leslie Mae
Laure, Jay Niemes, Myra
Horca, Irene
 LEARNING DISABILITIES
• Learning disability (LD) is a general term that describes specific kinds of learning
problems. A learning disability can cause a person to have trouble learning and using
certain skills.
• The skills most often affected are reading, writing, listening, speaking, reasoning, and
doing math. Learning disabilities vary from person to person. One person with LD may
not have the same kind of learning problems as another person with LD. One person may
have trouble with reading and writing. Another person with LD may have problems
understanding math. Still another person may have trouble in each of these areas, as well
as with understanding what people are saying (National Dissemination Center for
Children and Youth with Disabilities [NICHCY], 2004).
 LEARNING DISABILITIES
• The definition of Learning Disability as per the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual – IV (DSM-IV)
(American Psychiatric Association, 1994): Learning Disorders are diagnosed when the individual’s
achievement on individually administered, standardized tests in reading, mathematics or written
expression is substantially below that expected for age, schooling and level of intelligence. The
learning problems significantly interfere with academic achievement or activities of daily living.
• A learning disability is a neurological disorder that affects the brain’s ability to receive, process,
store, and respond to information. The term learning disability is used to describe the seemingly
unexplained difficulty a person of at least average intelligence has in acquiring basic academic
skills. These skills are essential for success at school and work, and for coping with life in general.
“LD” does not stand for a single disorder. It is a term that refers to a group of disorders.
CLASSIFICATION OF LEARNING DISABILITIES
Common Types of LD:

• Dyslexia: Difficulty in writing, reading and spelling

• The general term for reading disability which involves difficulty in phonetic
mapping, where sufferers have difficulty with matching various orthographic
representations to specific sounds.
• Some claim that dyslexia involves a difficulty with sequential ordering such that a
person can see a combination of letters but not perceive them in the correct order
• Dyscalculia: Mathematic and computation problems.
• The general term for disability in mathematic
CLASSIFICATION OF LEARNING DISABILITIES
Common Types of LD:

• Dysgraphia: difficulty with writing , spelling and composition

• The general term for a disability in physical writing, usually linked to problems with visual-motor
integration or fine motor skills.
• Dyspraxia: problems with manual dexterity and coordination (Various terms are used to describe specific
learning disabilities.
• A person may exhibit one or more of them)
• Dysphasia/Aphasia: Speech and language disorders
• Difficulty producing speech sounds (articulation disorder)
• Difficulty putting ideas into spoken form (expressive disorder)
• Difficulty perceiving or understanding what other people say (receptive disorder).
 CAUSES
Heredity
• Learning disabilities often run in the family. Children with learning disabilities are likely to have
parents or other relatives with similar difficulties.
Problem during pregnancy and birth.
• Learning disabilities can result from anomalies in the developing brain, illness or injury, fetal
exposure to alcohol or drugs, low birth weight, oxygen deprivation, or by premature or prolonged
labor
Accidents after birth.
• Learning disabilities can also be caused by head injuries, malnutrition, or by toxic exposure (such
as heavy metals or pesticides).
 EARLY IDENTIFICATION and
ASSESSMENT PROCEDURES
• LD is not curable
• Using compensatory mechanisms to alter functional gaps which are to be
initiated early to ensure that the disability is not aggravated further
• The child must be able to develop and learn to the best of his/her potential
• Early intervention presupposes early identification
• At present, there is no universally standardized screening procedure to
guide referrals from schools
 EARLY IDENTIFICATION and
ASSESSMENT PROCEDURES
The Schwab Foundation for Learning has a grade specific checklist to help
identify “at risk for LD” children. This list is comprehensive and usually
followed by organizations working in the field of LD (Schwab Learning,
2002). The checklist for LD in the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Manual (SSA,
2003) is also a helpful tool for initial screening by teachers in the schools
 ASSESSMENT
• The child must be assessed in all areas related to the suspected disability
such as health, vision hearing, social and emotional status, general
intelligence, academic performance, communicative status, and motor
abilities
• Ideal assessment for LD is a long process requiring several sessions with a
qualified educational psychologist
 The assessment procedure for LD involves the following
steps:

a. Parental Consent and Parent Interview

b. Parents’ consent must be obtained before evaluating the child.
c. The academic, developmental and medical history along with the
linguistic usage and communications patterns of the child must be obtained
from the parents
d. The parent must be involved in the planning of the intervention program
such as attending a resource room, provision of accommodation and
modifications to the child
 The assessment procedure for LD involves the following
steps:

e. Gathering Information from the Teachers/School

f. Child’s performance and behavior in the class, and gain insights from the
teacher.
g. Review of previous grades will show the pattern of academic progress
h. Looking at Student Workbooks
i. The examination papers may give a clearer picture of the specific nature of
difficulty
 OTHER ASSESSMENT
Dynamic Assessment
• The goal “is to explore the nature of learning, with the objective of collecting information to bring
about cognitive change and to enhance instruction”
• Dynamic assessment includes a dialogue or interaction between the examiner and the student
• This interaction may include modeling the task for the student, giving the student prompts or cues
as he/she tries to solve a given problem, asking what a student is thinking while working on the
problem and giving praise or encouragement
• The interaction allows the examiner to draw conclusions about the student’s thinking processes and
his/her response to a learning situation.
• The “teaching” phase is followed by a retesting of the student with a similar task but without
assistance from the examiner.
 OTHER ASSESSMENT

INTERVIEW
• “An Interview should be a conversation with a purpose” with questions
designed to collect information that “relates to the observed or suspected
disability of the child”.
• A careful review of the student’s school records or work samples help the
assessment team identify patterns or areas of specific concern which may
be focused on at the time of interview.
 OTHER ASSESSMENT

TESTING
• Though increasingly controversial, most assessments for LD include
standardized tests
There are two types of tests:
a) Criterion-referenced tests
b) Norm-referenced tests:
 OTHER ASSESSMENT
CRITERION-REFERENCED TESTS
• Criterion-referenced tests are scored according to a standard, or criterion
decided by the teacher, the school, or the test publisher.
• An example of a criterion referenced test might be a teacher-made spelling
test where there are 20 words to be spelled and where the teacher has
defined an “acceptable level of mastery” as 16 correct (or 80%).
 OTHER ASSESSMENT

NORM-REFERENCED TESTS
• Norm-referenced tests: Scores on these tests are not interpreted
according to an absolute standard or criterion (i.e., 8 out of 10 correct,
etc.) but, on how the student’s performance compares with that of the
norm group (a large number of representatives of that age group).
• This helps evaluators determine whether the child is performing at a
typical level, below, or above that expected of a given ethnicity,
socio-economic status, age, or grade.
Essentially, the tests for LD have two major components:

1. Testing for Potential: Performance Discrepancy.

2. Testing Processing Abilities
• A two-year discrepancy between potential and performance is an indicator
of a possible LD. Validity of a significant discrepancy will be evaluated on
a case by case basis.
 OTHER ASSESSMENT
DRAWBACK
• The drawback of this type of test is that the norms in different regions of a country will
vary and too, the norms of the same region will change over a period of time.
• Hence in a diverse country like India, each area would have to develop its own norms
which would need to be reviewed periodically
LEARNING STYLES
• learning style assessment, attempts to determine the elements that has an impact on a
child’s learning
 PREVENTION AND INTERVENTION

Prevention
SYNTHETIC AND ANALYTIC PHONICS
• Phonological awareness is an essential skill for reading, writing, and listening
• There are two main approaches to teaching phonics: analytic and synthetic
• Both approaches require the learner to have some phonological awareness (the ability to
hear and discriminate sounds in spoken language).
• Synthetic instruction first presents the parts of the language and then how the parts work
together to form a whole.
 PREVENTION AND INTERVENTION

• Analytic instruction presents the whole first and then how to break it into
its component parts
• Approaches that use a phonics drill may seem effective in the short term,
but unless they are embedded within meaningful and purposeful texts and
reading activities, they may well remain to be viewed as exercises for
school and not as reading ‘for real’.
 PREVENTION AND INTERVENTION

MULTI SENSORY TEACHING

• All learning takes place through various senses.
• Babies learn a lot through a tactile approach (feeling, touching, and mouthing)
• In pre-school, kinesthetic activities (activities involving movement) enhance learning.
For example, the child learns about a circle by forming a circle at play.
• Using a multi-sensory teaching approach means helping a child to learn through more
than one of the sense. Involve the use of more of the child’s senses, especially the use of
touch and movement (kinetic).
 PREVENTION AND INTERVENTION

Interventions
• Several components constitute interventions for individuals with LD. First, they need
intensive, targeted treatment aimed at developing phonemic awareness, phonics and
fluency
• Also needed is instruction in vocabulary, background knowledge, and comprehension
strategies
• Many children with LD have difficulty with expressive language these children be
evaluated for non-language subjects through more multiple choice questions, drawings,
etc., to avoid repeated failures.
 PREVENTION AND INTERVENTION

PRE-SCHOOL INTERVENTION
• At present there is no standard developmentally appropriate pre-school curriculum followed in our
country. This in itself creates difficulties and for children at risk for LD, aggravates the problem
Pre-school intervention should focus on:
(a)Language development,
(b) development of fine motor and visual motor skills
• Adaptations of the Developmental Program in Visual Perception can be included as a part of the
regular pre-school curriculum, and
(c)Synthetic and Analytic Phonics as mentioned earlier.
 PREVENTION AND INTERVENTION

INTERVENTIONS AT PRIMARY SCHOOL

• Interventions should focus on developing and strengthening language and basic skills of reading,
writing and arithmetic. In addition ensuring that children are allowed to “think” for themselves, to
develop higher cognitive functioning is vital.
• A reading strategy developed by Das based on the PASS (Planning - Attention - Simultaneous -
Successive) theory of cognitive development (Das, JP, 1998) may be used.
• This program is being used at the Maharashtra Dyslexia Association in conjunction with other
remedial measures.
• Emotional development must be incorporated into language-teaching with the ability to express
emotion, both positive and negative, appropriately, a vital aspect of education
 PREVENTION AND INTERVENTION

INTERVENTIONS AT MIDDLE SCHOOL

• Middle school is the time when the foundation for Sciences and Social Sciences are laid.
• Children with LD have great difficulty in memorizing, retrieval and linking of information.
• If they also have difficulties with learning English as a second language, failure is likely in every
aspect of learning.
• Interventions at this stage, in addition to continuing language development and basic skills, must
focus on teaching of concepts, critical thinking, and problem solving whilst encouraging creativity
and divergent thinking.
 PREVENTION AND INTERVENTION

INTERVENTIONS AT SECONDARY SCHOOL (STD. VIII TO X)

• In these classes children must be provided with ways and means to
complete school successfully so they can grow into confident, motivated
individuals with their self esteem intact. Accommodations and
modifications of curriculum are essential for this.
• Board, ICSE and CBSE Boards do offer some concessions during
examinations
• Vocational Opportunities.
 ACCOMMODATIONS AND MODIFICATIONS:
ADJUSTING THE CLASSROOM EXPERIENCE

Accommodations
• Accommodations provide different ways for children to take information or communicate their
knowledge back.
• The changes don’t alter or lower the standards or expectations for a subject or test.
• A child with delayed reading skills can participate in class discussions about a novel if she/he has
listened to the audio tape version of the book
• A child with poor writing and spelling skills may use assistive technology (tape recorder or word
processor) rather than struggle with pencil and paper to do her report.
 ACCOMMODATIONS AND MODIFICATIONS:
ADJUSTING THE CLASSROOM EXPERIENCE

• Accommodations would include classroom, alterations such as seating the

child in front
• Alterations in class work and homework such as individualizing
assignments, regarding length, number, due date
• Topic alterations in examinations such as multiple choice questions, oral
examinations, reading of question paper, allowance for spelling errors
 ACCOMMODATIONS AND MODIFICATIONS:
ADJUSTING THE CLASSROOM EXPERIENCE

Modifications
• Modifications are changes in the delivery, content, or instructional level of subject matter or tests.
• They result in changing or lowering expectations and create a different standard for kids with
disabilities than for those without disabilities.
• Modifications mean that the curriculum is changed quite a bit (Schwab Foundation, 2006).
• A fifth grade child with a severe math disability who isn’t ready to learn fractions and decimals
may still be working on addition and subtraction. This means that his instructional level has
changed significantly (second, not fifth, grade instruction) (Schwab Foundation, 2006