Learning Disabilities

Done By: Hanin Nasr

……… …….Sherihan Chehade
……… Zeinab Ezeddine
 Introduction:

Professionals and parents use term Learning Disabilities to describe a

condition of unexpected underachievement. (a defining characteristic of
Learning disability; poor school performance cannot be explained by other
disabilities)
We should differentiate between students with learning disabilities and
Low achiever students
Mental retardation, poor motivation, or poor teaching might explain low
achievement BUT learning disabilities probably reflect deficits in the ability to
process information or remember it.

Definition
Learning disability is a neurological condition that interferes with person ability to
store, process, or produce information.
Learning disability can affect ability to speak, write, spell, read, compute math, reason
and affect person’s attention, memory, coordination, social skill.
The term does not include learning problems that are primarily the result of visual,
hearing, or motor disabilities, mental retardation, emotional disturbance, or
environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantages.

Causes
neurological: brain damage.
those who do have brain damage, there are many specific causes: example, lack of
oxygen before, during, or after birth.
Heredity

Types of learning disabilities:

 Characteristics:

Motivation is the inner drive that causes individuals to be energized and directed in their behavior.
Attribution is self-explanations about the reasons for one’s success or failure.
Continuous frustration of failing at school can negatively affect students’ motivation, there is nothing they can do
to be successful.
Holding They can develop a negative attitude and come to believe that their failure is a result of lack of ability, rather
Negative than a signal to work harder or ask for help.
Attribution This cycle can even lead students to believe that external factors such as luck, extra help… are the reason for
whatever success they do have.
Students who expect failure are less likely to be motivated to learn or to expend the effort it takes to learn.
They can appear to others as “passive” or not actively involved in their learning.
They do not ask questions, seek help, or read related material to learn.
Not paying attention to the notable features of a learning task or not structuring one’s learning.
How to help them?
 Applying strategies for organizing information
Being  Being proficient in the use of thinking skills: classifying, associating and sequencing
nonstrategic  Classifying: enables the learner to categorize and group items together in terms of the characteristics
they have in common.
 Associating: means seeing the relationships that exist among and between different knowledge bases.
 Sequencing information: puts units of information in order along some dimensions.

Inability to They are unable to transfer their learning to novel situations or extend their learning of one skill to similar skills.
generalize One way to encourage generalization is explicitly to make connections between familiar problems and those that
are new or novel.
Many people with learning disabilities have difficulty in learning to read and write, understanding things they
are told, and even expressing themselves through oral communication.
Faulty How can teachers help student’s process information?
Information • Repeat important information in different ways.
processing: • Organize content systematically.
• Provide students with relevant information.
• Anchor content and assignments to student’s experiences and interests.

Though not all individuals with learning disabilities have problems with social skills, the vast majority do.
Poor Social Specially, about a quarter of them are average or above average in social skills and social competence.
Skills: For the other 75% of these individuals, problems with social skills negatively influence their self-concept, their
ability to make friends, their interaction with others, and even the way they approach schoolwork.
 Prevalence: Three major issues to be discussed through learning disability:

Size: nearly half of the students with disabilities are identified as having learning
disabilities, and the number increases each year.
Cost: Special education costs almost twice as much as general education.
Misidentification: Diverse learners are disproportionately represented in specific
education
Prevention:
Without knowing the cause of learning disabilities, it is impossible to develop a
set of preventive procedures or strategies.
When the cause of learning disabilities is discovered, definite prevention
strategies cannot be developed.
However, the impact of the disability can be lessened, and in some cases the
condition remediated or compensated for, through education.

Assessment: Early Identification:

students with learning disabilities are identified at grade 3. However, some

disabilities are not identified until college. Why?

Here are the reasons:

1. Might make diagnostic mistake.

2. Might have different developmental rate for children.
3. Significant discrepancy: between achievement and potential. When children
are very young, such discrepancies are impossible to detect.
Question posed:
May we find a way to identify learning disabilities in order to have early
intervention?
The answer is yes using these two ways:
• Identify Children at Risk: • Show early warning signs:
Poverty Inability to read and have proper
Not talking by age 3 pronunciation
Low birth weight
Premature babies
Pre-Referral: Response to Intervention:
Discrepancy Formulas: such as: IQ score and Standardized Achievement Tests
Why did discrepancy formulas work?
• Objectivity • Easy to use by teacher and parents
Criticisms of Discrepancy Formulas:
IQ is unfair to many groups of children.
Results doesn’t help in planning and choosing a students’ educational program
or intervention.
Children must fail to undergo and have the needed services.

IDEA ’04 allows states in USA to use pre-referral step in the IEP “Individualized
Educational Process”
 Initial Identification for learning  Full Identification.
disability.
Purpose: filters students resistant to treatment through many processes that
determine their Response to Intervention.
RTI: a multi-tiered pre-referral method of increasingly intensive interventions;
used to identify nonresponders students with learning disabilities (resistant to
treatment)
BUT what does this mean?
 Those who fail to make adequate progress.
 Student who do not profit from extensive instruction in the general education
classroom and are in need for special education.
Benefits of RTI:
No delay in receiving intervention No stigma
Reduces inappropriate referrals Low achievement is distinguished
Poor Teaching is not a reason from learning disabilities
Assessment leads to intervention
Skills tested by the RTI system:
Kindergarten: Letter-sound fluency
Grade 1: Word recognition fluency
Grades 2 -3: Passage reading
Grade 4: Maze Fluency: filling in missing words when reading a passage.
Some researchers suggested procedure to implement RTI:
Kindergarten to 4th grade experience universal screening and are tested once in the
fall.  Students demonstrating skills that put them at risk are identified for
intervention.  Validated procedures (e.g. Direct Instruction on reading skills) are
implemented and students’ progress is monitored throughout and after
intervention. Students who do not learn after receiving 3 increasingly intensive
levels of instruction are either identified as having learning disability or sent on the
further assessments.
Assessment: Identification
Pre-referral does not replace, but rather supports, formal referrals to special
education for all students who fail with more intensive instruction.
A multidisciplinary team administers a comprehensive assessment battery of
tests that might include standardized tests of intelligence, achievement, hearing
and vision.
Purpose: to specifically determine the cause of the student’s problems and to
ensure that mental retardation or other disability is not misidentified as having a
LD.
 Evaluation: Curriculum Based Measurement “CBM”
CBM: form of progress monitoring that uses direct and frequent measurements of
students’ actual performance. Such as: oral reading rates, percentage of correct
answers to mathematics problems…

o Role:

− evaluate individual students progress

− assess the effectiveness of the instructional methods they are using.
o Benefits of CBM
− Teachers plan more effective instruction
− Students see that they are responsible for their learning and performance.
− Reflects progress on learning the curriculum content
Steps:

Create or
Administer Make
select Graph the Communicate
and score Set goals instructional
appropriate scores progress
probes decisions
tests

Early Intervention

Core Skills of Reading

Reading is crucial to school success, and it is a skill that is difficult for most students
with learning disabilities to master.
Three skills that begin to develop during the preschool years are important for later
success with reading, which are:
• Phonological awareness: It is one important set of skills both for language
development and for later reading success. It identifies, separates and
manipulates the sound units of spoken language.
Indicators of phonological awareness include hearing and identifying sounds in
words, breaking or segmenting words and phrases into their smallest units and
rhyming.
• Rapid naming of alphabetic sounds and letters: It indicates by calling out quickly
the letters of the alphabet upon seeing them in any order.

• Beginning phonics: The ability to decipher printed words or identify the sounds
that are represented by individual letters and groups of letters.

Early Education Instruction

• Origins of literacy  early childhood
• Early instruction in phonological awareness, letter naming, and decoding is
helpful for all preschoolers.
• Children need to develop a love for reading, to gain skills and attitudes that favor
future literacy, and to recognize both that reading is important to them and that
is fun.
• Through their retelling and reenacting their favorite stories, the important
concept that print has meaning is understood early and becomes a basis for
future instruction.
Teaching Students with learning Disabilities:
Access to the General Education Curriculum: Early Intervening
Reading: one important way for students to access the content presented in the
basic education curriculum.
Explicit instruction in the basic skills may transform struggling readers into
confident ones.
Some key findings that support these points:
• Students who fail to acquire the core skills of reading soon after entering school
become poor readers.
• Students who complete first grade without having mastered phonological
awareness tend to be poor readers in fourth grade.
• Readers who are struggling at third grade tend to be poor readers at ninth grade.
• Struggling readers do not catch up on their own.
 • Early Intervening: Intensive and explicit instruction on the core skills of reading,
delivered early, often helps such students become better readers.
Instructional Accommodations
• Universal design for learning uses the computer to provide greater access to
printed material for those students who profit more by listening to print-to-
speech translations of texts or by being able to refer to definitions or examples of
difficult words and concepts.
• Read Regular helps clarify specific letters that are often confusing by making
them more clearly unique.
• Teachers who adjust the content and presentation of their instruction improve
outcomes of students with disabilities.
Validated Practices:
Practices that have Peer tutoring: Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies(PALS):
broad applications is one practice that is is an instructional tactic utilizing classmates as
consistently effective across all academic peer tutors. It works with students
grades and subjects. It also often referred to as difficult to teach, can be
benefits different types of implemented with entire classes of general
learners such as those at risk, education students, and frees teachers to work
English Language learners and more intensively with students who need
students with LD more help.
Learning Advance organizers.
Strategies Step-by-step  Advance organizer:
Curriculum: procedures for It explains to students why the content is
application of the important and mention some features of the
strategy. content on which to focus their attention.
Mnemonics.  Mnemonics:
Built-in systems for Are memory aids that help people remember
progress monitoring. items that go together.
 Technology: Computers are common in schools and at home.

The benefits to students with disabilities are many, and the possibilities opened
up by technology continue to be discovered.

o Technology can:
Augment an individual’s strengths.
Compensate for the effects of disabilities.
Provide alternative modes of performing tasks.
The web offers excitement and enrichment that might otherwise be missing from
the curriculum.
The computer can also facilitate collaboration between students, making it easier
for two or more students to work together on a writing task.

Collaboration: True” collaboration blooms when certain important conditions exist:

Communication is open and ongoing. Decision making is done as a team.

Participation is voluntary. Resources are pooled.
Parity exists in the relationship. Trust and respect are the basis of the
Goals are shared. partnership.
Evaluation of student performance is Planning time is scheduled.
continual.

Transitions: Goal: being happy and productive.

A. Adult Outcomes: B. Postsecondary Options:

• For most adults with learning disabilities Postsecondary education–educational opportunities
life is complicated by problems that beyond high school – is not an option for them because
began in early childhood. they did not complete high school.
• Improved academic performance is not Some recommended by parents and professionals in this
the only answer to better outcomes area:
•Teachers can help students master • Alternative exam formats.
additional sets of important life skills, • Extended time.
such as self-advocacy and self- regulation. • Electronic versions of textbooks.
• Workers with LD who have college • Tutors.
degrees earn substantially more than • Readers, classroom note takers, or scribes.
those who did not receive postsecondary • Registration assistance, priority class registration
degrees. course substitutions.
• Flexible course schedules.

Partnerships with Families and Communities

 College Selection:  Homework
Leaving high school: troubling time for both help students become independent learners.
the individual with LD and her or his family. keep parents informed both about the work being
In high school: students have IEPs to guide done at school and about their child’s progress in
the delivery of their educational programs the curriculum.
and supportive services. homework a more positive experience by making
There is no IEP for college. certain that students know how to do the
Flexibility and freedom assignment.
4- year college as a first-year: visit different It is a serious part of the instructional program and
college campuses, investigate what support also provide opportunities for home-school
services are offered, and meet with college communication.
staff. Communication between parents and teachers about
the partnership they create with the staff at homework might improve. Here are some guidelines
their college’s office of disability services to consider:
that makes success in postsecondary Parents and teachers need to communicate more
education more easily achieved. about homework
Preparation to go college must begin early in Parents need to tell teachers about homework
student’s academic careers. difficulties.
In elementary school they learn the Teachers need to tell parents about the quality and
fundamentals on which future learning will completion of homework assignments.
be based. Parents need to implement consequences when
In middle school they begin being homework is not completed or is unsatisfactory.
independent learners. Parents need to know whom to contact at school
In high school they learn the basic content about homework issues.
and skills they will need to succeed when find ways to communicate with parents who do not
they experience the freedom and challenges speak English.
of college.