1. The document provides information about specific learning disabilities, including the federal definition, prevalence, causes, and characteristics. It describes difficulties with oral expression, listening comprehension, written expression, basic reading skills, reading fluency, reading comprehension, mathematical calculation, and problem solving. 2. It discusses educational considerations like cognitive training, instructional approaches, direct instruction, task analysis, peer tutoring/PALS, and service delivery models. Assessment of progress may include CBM, informal assessment, and testing accommodations. 3. Early intervention includes screening tools for identifying children with risks in areas like letter naming fluency, phoneme segmentation fluency, oral reading fluency, written expression, spelling, and math. Transition

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Chart-At-A-Glance
Disability: Specific Learning Disabilities
Name of Student: Erica Hefner
Category of Disability:
 Specific Learning Disabilities
Federal (IDEA) definition on this disability:
Specific Learning Disability (SLD) is a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological
processes involved in understanding or in using spoken or written language. The disability may
be exhibited as an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do
mathematical calculations. SLD also includes conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain
injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia.
Prevalence:
 5% of the nation’s school population, has been diagnosed, 47% of all disabilities
Causes:
 Genetic Factors – 35-45% of first degree relatives with reading, spelling, language,
and speech disabilities have children displaying like characteristics
 Toxins – agents causing malformations in the fetus, unintentional exposure to lead
 Medical factors – premature birth, pediatric AIDS, structural and functional
differences in and around the left temporal lobe.
Characteristics:
1. Oral Expression – use of words and ability to formulate and produce words and
sentences with appropriate vocabulary and grammar and application of conversational
rules
Students will display difficulty with the grammatical processes of inflection, marking
categories like person, tense, and case (e.g., the -s- in jumps marks the third-person
singular in the present tense), and derivation, the formation of new words from existing
words (e.g. acceptable from accept), learning vocabulary, formulating complete,
semantically and grammatically correct sentences either spoken or written, explaining
word associations, antonyms/synonyms, retelling, making inferences, and predictions
2. Listening Comprehension - the understanding of the implications and explicit meanings
of words and sentences of spoken language.
Students will display difficulty with following directions for seatwork and projects,
remembering homework assignments, understanding oral narratives and text, answering
questions about the content of the information given, critical thinking to arrive at logical
answers, word associations, antonyms/synonyms, categorizing and classifying, note-taking
or dictation
3. Written Expression
Dysgraphia is a neurological disorder characterized by poor handwriting, with poor
spelling as a secondary characteristic. People with dysgraphia often have fine-motor
problems that specifically affect written language
-Difficulty recalling the sequence of strokes needed to form a specific letter;
-Use of the larger muscles of the wrist and forearm rather than small muscles of the fingers
to form letters

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-Finger agnosia, in which a student has to visually monitor the location of the writing
instrument because the fingers do not report their location to the brain. A person with
agnosia may have an awkward, fist-like pencil grip, placing the thumb over the fingers and
thus preventing the fingers from moving the pencil easily
4. Basic Reading Skill - struggle to identify individual sounds and manipulate them; to
identify printed letters and the sounds associated with those letters, or to decode written
language. It is also typical for these students to struggle with spelling, or encoding. This is
frequently termed as dyslexia.
5. Reading Fluency Skills - the ability to read words accurately, quickly and effortlessly.
Additionally, fluency skills include the ability to read with appropriate expression and
intonation or prosody. Fluency therefore relies on three key skills: accuracy, rate, and
prosody.
- Students will struggle with any rapid automatic naming tasks such as identifying colors,
letter names, numbers, and names of familiar items and so on. Students who are struggling
to read are less motivated to read, reducing exposure to vocabulary, a critical element of
reading comprehension. As a student progresses through school, a breakdown in fluency
can make it extraordinarily difficult to keep up with the intensity and high volume of
reading required for secondary and post-secondary education.
6. Reading Comprehension - ability to understand and make meaning of text. Students who
are poor readers do not stop when they are confused by text and will not check for
understanding during the reading process
7. Mathematical Calculation - the knowledge and retrieval of facts and the application of
procedural knowledge in calculation. Typically, students with a mathematical calculation
disability struggle in the area number and operations of the content strand.
8. Problem Solving - Mathematical problem solving involves using mathematical
computation skills, language, and reasoning, reading, and visual‐spatial skills in solving
problems; essentially it is applying mathematical knowledge at the conceptual level.
Students with a mathematical problem solving disability will often have problems within
the category of mathematical processes.
Educational Considerations:
 Cognitive Training
-Self Instruction problem solving while performing tasks to bring behavior under verbal control
-Self Monitoring - students track their own and record if behavior is occurring over severaldays
-Scaffolded Instruction – provides instruction and gradually reduces assistance
-Reciprocal Teaching - allows the student to assume role of co-teacher
 Instructional Approaches for Academics
-Reading – teaching students to manipulate phonemes in words
-Writing – explicit instruction for planning revising and editing compositions
through self regulation strategy development.
-Math – Instruction is explicit, high structure, teacher directed and sequenced
lessons
-Science and Social Studies –Activities based curriculum in a highly structured,
sequenced planned environment. Textbook content enhancement with graphic
organizers and mnemonics
 Direct instruction – highly structured teacher directed method of instruction, rapid
paced, teacher questioning, achievement grouping.
-Task Analysis – breaking down academic problems into component parts to teach
separately and then put back together to demonstrate large skill

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 Peer Tutoring/PALS pairs higher performing student with lower in structured
tutoring session, taking turns being coach and reader.
 Service Delivery Models – Inclusion with cooperative instruction
Assessment of Progress
 Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM)
 Informal Assessment
-Informal reading inventory (IRI) – reading from a list that gets progressively
harder
-Mathematics dynamics assessments (MDA) 1. Examine understanding, 2. Assess
interest 3. Examine prior patterns 4. Use flexible interviews
 Testing Accommodations – extended time and small group setting
Early Intervention
Prediction and assessment of SLD in preschool years is difficult because of access and
exposure to academics in addition to developmental delays compounding the approach to
identifying SLD. Listed are screening tools for identifying children in grades K-8.
 Letter Naming Fluency/Letter Sound Fluency/Phoneme Segmentation Fluency:
AIMSweb, DIBELS, WirelessGeneration, MClass, Vital Indicators of ProgressE I
Screening: Hammill Multiability Achievement Tests / Wide Range Achievement
Test-Expanded (WRAT-Expanded) /Young Children’s Achievement Test (YCAT)
 Oral Reading Fluency: Texas Primary Reading Inventory TPRI /Gray Diagnostic
Reading Inventory /Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE) /Marie Clay’s
Observation Survey (research indicates this tool may underestimate students at-risk
due to low ceilings) /Measures of Academic Progress (Northwest Evaluation
Association)
 Written Expression and Spelling: Individual Growth and Development Indicator
(similar to DIBELS)—IDGIs may be completed to monitor students not receiving
specialized intervention, to identify students who might benefit from such
interventions and to monitor the effects of intervention.
 Math Computation/Facts/Concepts/Application: E I Screening: Young Children’s
Achievement Test (Y-CAT) / Early Childhood Outcomes Center University of North
Carolina. Tools—instrument crosswalks. /Individual Growth & Development
Indicator (IDGI - similar to DIBELS)—IDGI’s may be completed to monitor students
not receiving specialized intervention, to identify students who might benefit from
such interventions and to monitor the effects of intervention.
Transition to Adulthood
 Factors Related to Successful Transition include goal setting, vocational training,
and a supportive work environment.
 Secondary Programming involves basic academics, functional skills, and supervised
work experiences.
 Postsecondary Programming will need to involve SOP with assessment reports,
accommodations, recommendations, assistive technology and support services.
References

4. 4
Center for parent information and resources. (2016). Retrieved from
http://www.parentcenterhub.org/repository/
Hallahan, D., Kauffman, J., & Pullen, P. (2013). Exceptional learners: An introduction to special
education (13th ed.). United States: Pearson.