Posts Tagged ‘Learning Disabilities/Learning Difficulties’
Back to School Tips for Parents of LD, Dyslexic, or ADHD Kids
August 25th, 2009Using Visual Clocks to Help Your ADHD, Dyslexic, or LD Kids at School
August 22nd, 2009Dyslexia & LD Dysgraphia Problems
July 31st, 2009Live: The LD Screening Tool Has Arrived!
March 23rd, 2009Yes, it is here! Spring is here, the tulip tree is blooming as is the manzanita tree, daffodils, the wild violets…And the Learning Difficulty/Disability Assessment Tool and Informal Comprehensive Identification Tool has arrived!
You will now be able to get your hands on it and be able to informally test your own child or student. You will know the specific areas of strengths and weaknesses of your child. You will know if you need to pursue formal testing, and you will know what kind of formal testing should be done.
By Linda Foster of The LINK (website review)
Without proper diagnosis, a student might spend his/her school years struggling with schoolwork and feeling inadequate. Lacking the confidence to succeed often causes students to ignore instructions and become disruptive. This scenario can occur in classroom or homeschool settings causing frustration not only for the student, but, also, for the teacher/parent. Screening Tool is an excellent guide to assessing a student.
Before any screening takes place, it is important to understand the different types of learning disabilities and difficulties that might be encountered and Bonnie Terry offers a clearly written and easily understood overview of these potential problems.
The LD Screening Tool includes two assessments: A pre-screening tool and checklists of the various processing difficulties that might be encountered. The Pre-Screening Tool consists of a checklist of possible symptoms of learning difficulties, dyslexia, or learning problems and then offers checklists of symptoms that might occur at different developmental stages. In the scoring section, it is noted that it is not unusual for students to exhibit one or more of the symptoms at one time or another and this is not a cause for alarm. Exhibiting three or more of the symptoms, though, over a period of time may signal a learning difficulty or learning disability.
The LD Screening Tool provides information on what to do if a potential learning difficulty or learning disability has been determined. It offers parents and teachers insight into the cause and effect of learning difficulties and learning disabilities on student abilities or behavior in the classroom or the homeschool setting.
It also has two sections designed to offer students and parents alternative resources to assess and manage specific types of learning difficulties and learning disabilities.
Private testing can be very expensive, anywhere between $300.00 and $1000.00. I promised you a reasonably priced informal assessment tool, one that even in today's tight ecomony you would be able to avail yourself of. You would be able to informally assess your own child in the comfort of your own home. So, it's not $300.00, not $100.00, not even $50.00. Just go to the LD Screening Tool and order your own copy today for only $37.00.
Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET
Is the Learning Difficulty/Disability Assessment Tool and Informal Comprehensive Identification Tool designed for school personnel?
March 5th, 2009Is the informal LD dyslexia assessment tool designed for parents so that they in turn could arrive at a decision for formal evaluation?
March 2nd, 2009Laura Doto wrote me several questions regarding the Learning Difficulty/Disability Assessment Tool and Informal Comprehensive Identification Tool. I will be responding to them over the next several days.
Hi Bonnie --
Congratulations! -- I have a few questions about the pre-screening tool:
Is the informal assessment tool designed for parents so that they in turn could arrive at a decision for formal evaluation?
Yes, this is for parents as well as teachers so they can understand if their kids actually have a learning problem vs. laziness or behavior issues etc. Often a parent knows there child is struggling but doesn't know why, they just know that schoolwork is really hard for them. Some parents recognize there is a problem but don't know what to do about it or even how to describe it.
After going through the informal assessment tool, specific learning difficulties are identified. (Parents will understand why some things are hard and some not for their child.) Parents will also understand how the problems impact classroom performance. The informal assessment tool also lets them know if they should pursue formal testing what kinds of formal testing they should have done.
There is a section in the book that lists in-depth formal testing that is helpful when trying to figure out what kind of additional testing should be done. From the results of the informal assessment tool parents and teachers will have insight into which areas of processing need to be tested more with in-depth formal testing.
For instance, if the Informal Comprehensive Identification Tool shows that your child has a lot of visual processing difficulties, you will want to have an additional test done in that specific area. If it shows that your child has a lot of auditory processing difficulties, you will want to have an additional test done in that specific area. If it shows that your child has tactile/kinestietic difficulties, you will want to have an additional test done in that specific area.
The book lists multiple tests for each area of learning difficulty, which allows the tester to choose which test they prefer or are familiar with.
- Visual Processing Difficulties [6 assessments to choose from]
- Visual-Motor (Neuro-Sensory Integration) Assessments & Tactile/Kinesthetic
Assessments [18 assessments to choose from]
- Visual Memory & Learning Assessments [7 assessments to choose from]
- Auditory Memory & Learning Assessments [11 assessments to choose from]
Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET
My next post will cover:
Is the Learning Difficulty/Disability Pre-Screening Tool and Informal Comprehensive Identification Tool designed for school personnel, and if so, how would you recommend it get used as part of pursuing a more formal evaluation?
12 Activities Address Two More Areas of Visual Processing
February 26th, 2009The last two areas of visual processing are visual language classification and visual integration. Strengths in visual language classification help to create good comprehension. Visual integration pulls together the tactile/kinesthetic with the vision system. These are learned skills and can be improved even if you have dyslexia, LD, or ADHD.
Visual Language Classification: The ability to classify pictures and objects by category.
1. Teach difference and sameness using plastic bears, coins, chips. The student needs to sort them into groups, classifying them. Then have them describe why they are putting them in those different piles.
2. Classify food according to food groups and explain why you are placing them into the different category.
3. After using objects, use pictures from magazines, sorting them into categories.
4. Sort word lists into categories, again, explaining why you are putting them into those lists.
5. Classify words according to prefixes, suffixes, base or root word.
6. Sort the words from The Sentence Zone game according to colors. Can be done from 1st grade - 12th.
Visual Integration: The ability to integrate body image with spatial and temporal areas.
- Play obstacle course games with students.
- Provide experiences for students to experience in, on, down, up, below, beneath, behind, over, under.
- Place an arrow on the student's desk, reminding them which direction to start with.
- Estimate the distance between objects.
- Give students clues by using colors so they maintain proper placement in math problems. Use graph paper for math problems.
- Fold a paper into 6 or 8 sections. Give them directions to fill in the sections (e.g. Put a red 'x' in the top left section. Put a green 'o' in the middle section of the bottom row.)
Definitions of the areas are excerpted from the Learning Difficulty/Disability Pre-Screening and Informal Comprehensive Identification Tool. It will be available soon. The book contains more information on the impact difficulties in these areas have in the classroom as well as how to determine if your student has difficulties in any of these areas.
Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET
Please pass the article along to anyone you think might benefit from it. And, don't forget to sign up for the FREE Homework & Teaching Tips if you haven't already done so. Just fill your name and email in the upper right hand corner.
20 Activities: Improve Visual Processing in LD & Dyslexic Children
February 19th, 2009R. B. just asked, "Could you suggest some activities for improving visual processing in L.D or dyslexic children?"
There are 9 areas of Visual Processing that affect learning. So, what I'm going to do is to present a few activities for three of those areas in this post and then post additional activities in future posts.
Visual Motor: The ability to relate visual stimuli to motor responses in an appropriate way.
- Swing arms in coordinated manner while walking, running, or jumping.
- Hopping activities, play hop-scotch.
- Jump rope, leap frog, skipping.
- Play Simon Says
- Balance beam activities.
- Tight rope activities - use masking tape on the floor, pretend it is a tight rope and skip, hop, or jump on the line.
- Coloring activities.
- Tracing activities.
- Copy words, sentences, or paragraphs from the chalkboard or desk.
- Complete dot-to-dot pictures
Visual Figure Ground: The ability to visually attend to the designated stimulus and not be distracted by the background.
- Have your student/s find hidden objects in pictures, including geometric shapes.
- Block out areas of the page so students don't have too much coming at them - limiting thee background material.
- Provide books that have hidden pictures in them and look for the hidden pictures.
- Have your students find specific items in an aquarium.
Visual Discrimination and Form Constancy: The ability to discern similarities and differences visually.
1. Do sorting activities (use nuts, bolts, buttons, seeds, shells, blocks, etc.). After sorting, have students verbally describe the differences and similarities between objects.
2. Use colored blocks, make a pattern with them, and have the student copy the pattern.
3. Sorting activities where students put different objects into respective containers.
4. Sort shapes or letters - magnetic ones or pictures of them.
5. Put a letter on the board or piece of paper and have students circle all of the letters that are the same from a page in a book, magazine, or newspaper.
6. Match letters or words on a page.
Definitions of the areas are excerpted from the Learning Difficulty/Disability Pre-Screening and Informal Comprehensive Identification Tool. It will be available soon. The book contains more information on the impact difficulties in these areas have in the classroom as well as how to determine if your student has difficulties in any of these areas.
What Do I Do? I Know There Is a Learning Problem & the School Says No
February 11th, 2009A few years ago a parent called me. She was distraught. She didn't know what to do. She had just gotten off the phone with her daughter's school. She was informed again that her 9th grade daughter did not qualify for any help within the school system. She had been trying to get help for her daughter for years. Every time the school did an evaluation on her daughter the answer was the same. "She scores very high in the auditory areas so she doesn't qualify for help."
The only way her daughter managed was that she and her husband read everything to her after school so she could keep up with her schoolwork and homework. The problem was that they couldn't follow her around at school all day long year after year reading everything to her.
This practice has been going on for years. When this occurs, all is not lost. As hard as it is, as a parent, what you need to do is to keep advocating. You can actually make a case for a discrepancy if you become a bit educated in what is actually going on.
There are 3 areas of perception. We learn by hearing, seeing, and doing. The areas of perception are auditory, visual, and tactile/kinesthetic. A student can qualify for help when there is a severe discrepancy between the auditory processing and visual processing levels.
There are nine different areas each of auditory processing, visual processing, and tactile/kinesthetic processing. If you go through an informal assessment that is created for parents or teachers, you will be able to tell which areas are strong and which are weak. With that knowledge you can ask the school to do formal testing geared to those areas to see if there is an actual discrepancy. And, if there is, your child will qualify for additional IEP help.
I hope this is helpful.
Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET
