a short description of learning disabilities!

1. Learning Disabilities By: Liz Eline, Sarah Buchheit, Hannah Stevelingston

2. What is a learning disability? A disability in which there is a discrepancy between a person’s ability and academic achievement; individual possesses average intelligence.

3. Primary Characteristics: Deficits in academic performance and cannot exist without impairment in academic achievement. Seven Categories of School Performance: 1.) Reading 2.) Mathematics 3.) Written Language 4.) Spoken Language 5.) Memory 6.) Metacognition 7.) Attributions

4. Reading • Well over half of all students identified as learning disabled exhibit problems with reading. •Students who have difficulty reading may be dyslexic and have a lack of understanding of the rules that govern the correspondence between specific sounds and certain letters that make up words. • Dyslexia: a type of reading disorder in which the student fails to recognize and comprehend written words

5. CLIP FROM GEORGE LOPEZ!!!!!!!!!!!

6. Mathematics •One out of every four students with learning disabilities receives help with mathematics. Examples: computational skills, words problems, spatial relationships, writing numbers/copying shapes, telling time, understanding fractions/decimals, or measuring. •Problems that begin in elementary school generally continue through high school and they have troubling consequences in adulthood.

7. Written Language: •Includes: spelling, handwriting, and composition •Researchers speculate that a link exists between these areas of deficiency and a person’s reading ability because both may rise from a lack of phonological awareness. •Spelling is the most difficult task for these students. Some may add or omit letters from a word.

8. Spoken Language •Issue with pragmatics: the functional use of language in social settings. •Problems with appropriate word choice, understanding complex sentence structure, and responding to questions are entailed in this category of learning disabilities. Specific mechanical deficient include: Syntax-how words are organized into sentences Semantics- word meanings Phonology- sound formation and blending of sounds to form words

9. Memory •Deals with the phrase: “in one ear and out the other” because students have trouble remembering academic and non-academic information. •People with learning disabilities have trouble with short term memory and working memory. •Short term memory: Tasks that typically involve the recall and correct order of either orally or visually presented information shortly after hearing or seeing the item several times •Working memory: requires that an individual retain information while simultaneously engaging in another cognitive activity.

10. Metacognition •Students who have disabilities often lack an awareness of their own thinking process. •The reading problems of students with learning disabilities may be due to deficiencies in metacognition: Clarifying the purposes of reading: pupils do not adjust their reading styles to accommodate the difficulty of the text. Focusing attention on important goals: children with reading problems experience difficulty in selecting the main ideas of a paragraph Monoroting