TET Notes - Learning Disabilities

 

                  Learning Disabilities

v  ‘Learning disability’ is a neurobehavioral disorder affecting brain’s ability to receive and process information.

v It is generally seen as a Specific development disorder affecting basic skills like reading, writing, numerical computations, etc.

v Children with such disability will not be able to participate in regular classroom activities as compared to other normal children.

Learning disabilities are classified into three:

v Dyspraxia - disability to move one’s bodily organs as he thinks.

 

v Dysphasia - disability due to not able to rotate the tongue properly.

 

v Dyscalculia – disability to understand math concepts and to perform math operations.

Learning assessment of students with learning disabilities involves the following techniques:

v Generally, for those having learning disability, only formative assessment and no separate summative assessment is undertaken.

v Learning progress is recorded in the cumulative record.

v Making each disabled child to function according to his/her level of skill development.

v Providing more drill and practice.

v After achieving learning proficiency in the basic skills required for a certain level of performance, moving to the next higher level.

v Using carefully prepared individual instructional plan, increasing the level of every small learning skill.

v Increasing the teacher- pupil interactions.

v Correcting the student’s mistakes in learning, then and there.

v Grouping students according to the levels of learning attainment.

v Assessing the learning progress often.

v Using the computer that can analyses words, identity the proper spelling and contains a dictionary too.

v Making use of the computer programmers which converts speech into the written forms and vice-versa.

v Making use of the ‘talking calculators’.

v Using books on audio-tape.

v Undertaking computer-based activities.

v Providing the facility for making available the services of note-taker, reader, proof-reader, scribe etc. needed for the teaching and assessing the learning of children with learning disabilities.

v Making the students to spend a specific amount of time every day in the resource room.

v Allowing students to use ‘addition and multiplication tables’ during the assessment tests

v Providing more space in the answer sheets for rough work in solving numerical problems.

v While evaluating student answers, without taking into consideration the spelling and grammatical mistakes command, assessing only the content which they try to convey.

v In assessment tests, instead of giving them into questions each of which require very small answers.