Strategies for Teaching Students With Learning Disabilities

Lucy C. Martin

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781412968034
• eBook ISBN: 9781452296128
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

"I wish I had this book when I started teaching! Every teacher starts out with an empty bag of tricks; it is nice to peek into someone?s bag!"
—Nicole Guyon, Special Education Teacher
Westerly School Department, Cranston, RI

Classroom-tested strategies that help students with learning disabilities succeed!

Teachers are often challenged to help students with learning disabilities reach their full academic potential. Written with humor and empathy, this engaging book offers a straightforward approach to skillful teaching of students with learning disabilities.

Developed for K–12 general and special education classrooms, this resource draws on the author?s 30 years of teaching experience to help teachers gain a greater understanding of students? learning differences and meet individual needs. Strategies are organized by skills—including reading, writing, math, organization, attention, and test-taking—helping teachers quickly identify the best techniques for assisting each student and encouraging independent learning. Readers will find:

• More than 100 practical strategies, interventions, and activities that build students? academic abilities
• Recommendations on appropriate accommodations, assessment techniques, and family communication
• Support for complying with recent federal mandates related to learning disabilities, including the ADA, Section 504, and the reauthorization of IDEA 2004
• Helpful guidance and stories from the author?s own classroom experiences
• Ready-to-use tools, forms, and guides

Discover innovative, easy-to-implement teaching methods that overcome barriers to learning and help students with special needs thrive in your classroom.

1 Awareness and Sensitivity

The Starting Point

The important work of education involves connecting students and teachers in a meaningful way. This connection enables learning to take place. In addition, a deep connection leads to such outcomes as mutual respect and appreciation. Understanding is at the core of this connection. Teachers have many responsibilities, but perhaps their most important responsibility is to understand their students.

Exactly what is involved in understanding a student? A teacher can increase his or her understanding of a student in many ways. Meeting with the student’s previous teachers can offer valuable information. The child’s cumulative file may contain important communications from parent conferences, as well as a quick overview of success and challenges represented by report cards. If the student is a good listener; speaks effectively, candidly, and comfortably; and has formed a positive association with a former teacher, meeting with him or her can prove useful. Arranging for the learning specialist to observe the student in several classes can help those involved “see” various situations that challenge the student. Finally, while time consuming and expensive in the private sector, an evaluation can offer the most complete and detailed information about a child’s learning strengths and challenges. Evaluations come in a number of forms with a variety of titles, including psychoeducational evaluations, psychological evaluations, speech and language evaluations, and so on. Learning disabilities are often diagnosed through a psychoeducational evaluation.

The diagnosis of learning disabilities or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) helps a teacher know why a child performs differently from his peers. The diagnosis explains lagging performance in an area of learning, whether academic or social. Understanding why a student has difficulties is the beginning of awareness. For example, a student might have trouble with history for a number of reasons; however, knowing that a student has difficulty with auditory memory can be the beginning of coming to grips with the challenge. Certain types of difficulties, such as anxiety, can masquerade as others, such as ADHD. In this instance, the child may be so preoccupied with internal issues and fears that his attention at school is obscured. Clearly, finding a highly qualified diagnostician is critical to getting the correct “read” on a student who faces obstacles at school.

Still, an intellectual understanding of differences is not enough. Teachers will have the most positive effect when they are sensitive to those differences and their impact on general learning. Relating to students on an emotional level is essential for full understanding. Teachers who can empathize with the challenge of disabilities are in the best position to seek solutions and to share their knowledge and understanding with others. Successful teachers understand their students. If the teacher has no personal experience with a specific learning problem, he or she will have difficulty appreciating its impact on a child’s learning and self-esteem in school.

A number of simulation exercises can help demonstrate the obstacles faced at school by students with learning disabilities and ADHD. The feelings associated with these hurdles can be powerful. If a teacher is working with a student who has a type of learning disability that is challenging to understand, it will be important to arrange a meeting with the learning specialist at the school. In addition, seeking opportunities for professional development can allow professionals to truly appreciate the difficulties students face. Rick Lavoie (1989) became well known in the world of education when he developed a video and workshop called F.A.T. City. The workshop simulates the “frustration,” “anxiety,” and “tension” school experiences pose to students with learning disabilities.

Over the next few pages, I hope you will see many reasons for understanding students at a deeper level. Consider what it would be like to go to a job every day that you knew in advance you could not do. Some students with learning disabilities have this type of experience every day at school. A call to awareness involves an intellectual understanding of students’ needs, as well as the emotional sensitivity to realize their ongoing challenge at school.

WHAT’S YOUR POMMEL HORSE?

Being able to tap into the child’s point of view is worth the time and effort involved. A great teacher will try to “crawl behind the child’s forehead” to assume the perspective of a student. To this end, I would like to share my own perspective of a challenge that I encountered during my school days. In addition, this true story speaks to the following issues:

• The difference between “can’t” and “won’t,” or the existence of a disability as opposed to resistant or avoidant behavior
• The need to adapt tasks to create paths for success and increased self-esteem
• The value of breaking tasks into manageable units that can lead to partial victories and perhaps eventually to total accomplishment

Among my most vivid memories from the all-girls private school I attended, I remember being in gym class, dressed in a light blue tunic with bloomers. A springboard and pommel horse, seemingly 20 feet high, were glaring at me, and the teacher told us, one by one, to run; spring off the board; lean forward into a leap; and simultaneously grab the handlebars of the pommel horse, raise and bend our legs into a crouch position, swish smoothly through the handlebars, and land cleanly on the other side of the horse.

Was she joking?

In 5 years, I never did it. I learned a few things, though:

1. I was never going to succeed at this task.
2. Lucy + pommel horse = fear, bruises, and humiliation.
3. I’d rather get a few laughs than continue the exercise in fear and humiliation. I adjusted the task. I ran, turned aside from the springboard, and ducked under the pommel horse! I picked scolding over humiliation.

What’s My Point Here?

What if the teacher had taken the time to adjust the task for me? For example, what if she had instructed me to focus on running, landing squarely and strongly on the center of the springboard, and maintaining my balance while landing on the floor?

What if she had offered choices for me and the number of other students who were not athletically inclined? There is certainly more than one path to skill development and more than one timeline for skill mastery.

What if, as mentioned in the introduction, the teacher had spoken with me directly? She likely would have understood my struggle more completely. We might have been able to exchange views and come up with a plan for success.

What’s your “pommel horse”? If you can identify it, you will be able to relate to students who experience difficulties. You will better understand their feelings and connect with them in a way that will lead to an enhanced learning experience for you and them.

THE TOP 10 REASONS TO UNDERSTAND STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES

Many tasks compete for a teacher’s time and attention. Some teachers might feel burdened by the demands placed on them by students with learning disabilities, yet there are compelling reasons to understand such students. Good teachers frequently offer a rationale for a unit of learning; here, the rationale for understanding students with learning disabilities is multifaceted:

1. Most children/adolescents/adults with learning disabilities possess gifts in other areas; understanding goes a long way toward preserving their enthusiasm and energy for continued excellence in their areas of giftedness. Many of these students are athletes, actors, musicians, and/or artists.
2. If your own child had a disability, you would want teachers to understand him, quirks and all.
3. You have learning specialists and psychologists to help you.
4. It is important in terms of human contributions, and it is interesting.
5. Parents will understandably bristle at remarks that insist on correcting a genuine disability.
6. There are legal reasons to do so, including such regulations as the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
7. This is not just for a school. It’s for the real world, too. Policies and laws protect the rights of disabled individuals in the workplace.
8. The child did not choose to have the disability.
9. This is an issue of educational diversity. Let’s try to understand one another and celebrate our differences.
10. Teachers who understand can develop a child’s sense of self-worth.

THE BASE OF THE LEARNING PYRAMID

Visualize the base of a pyramid. In education, this represents attention. A student’s attention might wander for a number of reasons:

1. He might be thinking about something else. Called internal distracters, these thoughts may include worries, trying to remember where something is, and so forth.
2. He might be tired. Perhaps he has a long bus ride or sleep problems or his family works long hours. Perhaps he has to attend a sibling’s extracurricular practices or games.
3. He might be preoccupied with sounds in the environment. Called external distracters, these sounds may include noises from lawn mowers, students playing outside, and so forth.
4. He might have an organic problem with sustained focus, such as ADHD.
5. He might be depressed and therefore unable to concentrate for regular periods.
6. He might have difficulty distinguishing between foreground and background, resulting in trouble filtering out irrelevant stimuli.

Other conditions can mimic problems with attention. The history and degree of attention-span variability are important considerations for a diagnosis of ADHD. A psychologist experienced in testing and diagnosis is the best resource for probing attention difficulties and making recommendations regarding treatment. This is critical because, unless the base of the pyramid is intact, the student won’t “get it” in the first place; then, he will have a hard time responding to it, recalling it, deriving meaning from it, applying it, and so forth. If variable attention exists and is managed, the student will be able to move up the pyramid.

AIR CONDITIONERS AND ANXIETY

For some students, the value of accommodations is tremendous. A teacher’s awareness of this value is important in implementing accommodations. I have noticed that when anxious students realize they can have accommodations to help manage their anxiety (e.g., extended time and/or private setting on tests), some of them don’t seem to need the accommodations as much. It’s as if they benefit from knowing an alternative is available. Simply stated, it’s a relief to know there’s relief.

I love air conditioners. Aside from the reality that they can make the indoors comfortable on a steamy August day, just knowing that I can manage the heat with the simple twist of a dial seems to keep me cooler.

UNDERKNOWLEDGE

Underknowledge refers to a basic fund of information accumulated over time. It is the result of life experience and formal education. Some students have underknowledge that seems like Swiss cheese—it contains random holes. Others have underknowledge as massive as Fort Knox. I would exercise caution about expectations for underknowledge for the following groups:

• Those new to a school
• Those from a different culture
• Those who have changed schools several times
• Those with specific disabilities (especially those with language-based disabilities, which can spin off socially)

Despite being a vast unknown, underknowledge is often expected to be the same for all students. This is not so. When teachers, coaches, or parents say, “You should know this by now,” likely they’re referring to recently taught concepts or the murky land of underknowledge.

Developmental issues also come into play when considering underknowledge. Brain research shows that the capacity to think abstractly is not fully developed until about 20 years of age.

DIFFERENT STROKES

Kevin, an 8-year-old, could not remember how to make a capital I in cursive, probably because this letter starts with a clockwise motion, which is very different from most other cursive letters (except capital J). After tracing in sand, using flocked wallpaper, making Play-Doh letters, and driving little trucks along the road of cursive capital I, it was time to adjust my thinking. Kevin could not learn this letter in the “standard” way. I instructed him to make a tiny c and connect it to a wide, lowercase cursive 1. He got this right away. The process was altered, but the product was fine. Teachers must be ready to alter approaches. Expecting students to learn the same way and achieve mastery at the same time is simply unreasonable. I encourage teachers to step outside the curriculum guide and use their own creativity to offer new approaches and solve problems on an individual basis.

Angela, a 9-year-old, had pronounced dyslexia. One of the most effective approaches to reading instruction is the Orton-Gillingham approach, which is how I began. One day, I flashed the salmon-colored card with the vowel combination AW on it. Instead of responding “A-W says ‘aw’ as in saw,” Angela said, “A-W says [long pause] ‘uh’ [schwa sound] as in was.” I was stunned. She had mastered the technique of associating letter combinations with key words and extracting sounds, but she had processed the letters in reverse. In her mind, she had reversed saw a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Introduction
• 1.Awareness and Sensitivity: The Starting Point
• 2. Student Needs: Clarifying and Understanding
• 3. Parents: Informing and Supporting
• 4. The Program: Facilitation, Support, and Consultation
• 5. Accommodations: Adjustments That Work
• 6. Strategies: Practical Tips to Help Students
• 7. Organization: Techniques to Get It Together
• 8. Test Format: Facilitating Accurate Assessment
• 9. Test Taking: Effective Tips for All
• 10. Self-Advocacy: The Path to Independence
• Notes: Space for Your Own Ideas
• Resources: Explore and Connect to Support
• References
• Index