Learning disabilities include various disorders that may affect the acquisition, organization, retention, understanding, or use of verbal or non-verbal information. Learning disabilities range in severity and interfere with the acquisition and use of oral language (eg. listening, speaking, understanding), reading (eg. decoding, comprehension), written language (eg. spelling, written expression), and/or mathematics (eg. computation, problem solving)
AB Education Code:
54
Common Learning Disabilites
Dyslexia: severe impairment of the ability to read and spell
Dysgraphia: difficulties in handwriting, spelling, or composition
Dyscalculia: impairment of the ability to pick appropriate strategies for mathematics
Auditory and Visual Processing Disorders: difficulties understanding language despite normal hearing and vision
Non-verbal Learning Disabilities: problems with visual-spatial, intuitive, organizational, evaluative and holistic processing functions.
Characteristics and/or Observable Behaviours
Preschool
Speaks later than most children
Pronunciation problems
Slow vocabulary growth, often unable to find the right word
Difficulty rhyming words
Trouble learning numbers, alphabet, days of the week, colors, shapes
Extremely restless and easily distracted
Trouble interacting with peers
Difficulty following directions or routines
Fine motor skills slow to develop
Grades K-4
Slow to learn the connection between letters and sounds
Confuses basic words (run, eat, want)
Makes consistent reading and spelling errors including letter reversals (b/d), inversions (m/w), transpositions (felt/left), and substitutions (house/home)
Transposes number sequences and confuses arithmetic signs (+, -, x, /, =)
Slow to remember facts
Slow to learn new skills, relies heavily on memorization
Impulsive, difficulty planning
Unstable pencil grip
Trouble learning about time
Poor coordination, unaware of physical surroundings, prone to accidents
Grades 5-8
Reverses letter sequences (soiled/solid, left/felt)
Slow to learn prefixes, suffixes, root words, and other spelling strategies
Avoids reading aloud
Trouble with word problems
Difficulty with handwriting
Awkward, fist-like, or tight pencil grip
Avoids writing assignments
Slow or poor recall of facts
Difficulty making friends
Trouble understanding body language and facial expressions
High School Students and Adults
Continues to spell incorrectly, frequently spells the same word differently in a single piece of writing
Avoids reading and writing tasks
Trouble summarizing
Trouble with open-ended questions on tests
Weak memory skills
Difficulty adjusting to new settings
Works slowly
Poor grasp of abstract concepts
Either pays too little attention to details or focuses on them too much
Misreads information
Teaching Strategies and Resources
Preschool
- keep verbal instructions short and simple
- match the level of content carefully to the child's developmental level
- give multiple examples to clarify meaning
- allow more practice than usual, especially when material is new
Elementary
- keep verbal instructions short and simple; have students repeat directions back to you to be sure they understood
- use mnemonics (memory strategies) in instruction to teach students how to remember
- repeat main points several times
- provide additional time for learning and practice - reteach when necessary
High School
- directly teach self-monitoring strategies, such as cuing students to ask, "Was I paying attention?"
- connect new material to knowledge students already have
- teach students to use external memory strategies and devices (tape-recording, note taking, creating to-do lists, etc.)
- direct instruction for decoding skills in reading (program must be structured and explicit)
Links and/or Sources
www.ldonline.org