Thursday, October 9, 2008

Specific Learning Disabilities

Today we discussed Specific Learning Disabilities. LD is by far the largest disability category among students with IEP, and represents about 5% of the general population. LD is overly-represented. 

Are we over-diagnosing? How severe must the disability be in order to receive related services? And, how badly must a kid fail in order to receive the attention and help that he/she needs?

Early intervention and identification is difficult because diagnosis lies between potential and performance, is RTI (Response to Intervention) a viable solution to the diagnosis problem?

3 comments:

Welcome to Lois' HafaBlog said...

Hafa Adai Heather,
Great presentation and you provided valuable information on the topic. If a child shows significant weaknessesses in cognitive, social/emotional, fine or gross motor skills, communication or behavioral skills, then the child will receive related educational services. My 14 yr. old granddaughter is going through several assessments to determine if she has ADHD or some kind of dyslexia. She is also seeing a child psychologist for her anxieties. The psychologist is working with the teachers at the school to make some modifications for her assignments and tests. I don't understand why some teachers didn't notice her struggles in class. My daughter shared her concern of the possibility of my granddaughter having dyslexia when she was in the 4th grade in Solars Elementary in Misawa, Japan. Instead, they had her in a special reading program called Reading 180. She is now a freshman in Radford High School in Honolulu. I really think that all teachers should be required to take special education courses so that they will be able to identify the disability a child may have. Hope my granddaughter can overcome her (?) disability. Comments anyone? Lois G.

Lolita said...

Hi Heather,
Enjoyed your presentation on ADHD. It was well thought and you've express so much knowledge on the disability. ADHD is quite a challenge and yes you are right all teachers should be required to take some courses at the university on working with children with disabilities. There are lots of children falling between the cracks because of this reason teachers don't know what to do. It's not easy learning about the different disabilities but as an educator we all need to understand how to evaluate and assessed them so that they can be successful in school. FANTISTIC Job!

Liwanag's Blog said...

Hi, Heather! Your presentation was great. I was impressed by your powerpoint presentation. You were good!....(Your question about specific LD) In most cases it is true that a student is diagnose only after he or she struggles academically. Now, that we are learning more information about different disabilities, as teachers, we can do early intervention as early as possible. Response to intervention is also a good solution to help students with specific learning disability to help them and teach them the necessary skills to prevent them from failing.