Week six:

Students with specific learning

disabilities

INTRODUCTION TO EXCEPTIONALITIES
SPED 23000
INSTRUCTOR: BRIAN FRIEDT
 Historical context

Category itself is comparatively new

 This (along with less social stigma) might account for larger
identification rates

Some brain/psychological connection

Traditional focus on language processing

 Definitional clarity

Unexpected underachievement
Does not achieve commensurate with age or ability
A discrepancy between expected and actual
achievement
 Measurement difficulty
 No longer a requirement for qualification
 Still the best way to conceptualize term to others
Failure to respond to interventions
 Recent development in law
 Probably better for screening
 Definitional clarity

 Ohio: (a) A disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved
in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in the
imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do
mathematical calculations. This includes conditions such as perceptual disabilities,
brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia and developmental aphasia.
(b) Disorders not included. Specific learning disability does not include learning problems
that are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities, of mental retardation,
of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.

 NJCLD: heterogeneous group of disorders manifested by significant difficulties in

the acquisition and use of listening, speaking, reading, writing. reasoning, or
mathematical abilities. Intrinsic to individual, presumed to be due to central
nervous system dysfunction...problems in self-regulatory, social perception, and
social interaction may exist with learning disabilities.

 For all disability definitions (the boilerplate), refer to:

http://www.edresourcesohio.org/ogdse/glossary
Prevalence
 Prevalence

 Outside general education less than 21% of the day: 54%

 Outside general education between 21% and 60% of the day: 34%

 Outside general education more than 60% of the day: 11%

 Causal factors

Use the book for specifics!

 Neurological basis
 Even more than last week; we are concerned with presentation
in the instructional setting
 Identification

Identification through:
 Discrepancy model OR RTI
 Early childhood

Precursors to SLD might be present

 Gross/fine motor
 Auditory/visual/linguistic processing
 Attention

Indicators of future difficulty

 Reading
 Social development

EARLY INTERVENTION
 School age

Impact of disability across these domains:

 Reading
 Writing
 Math
 Metacognitive processes
 Social skills
 Reading

Phonemic awareness/phonological awareness

 Segmentation (how many?)
 Isolation (first sound?)
 Blending (put together?)
 Identity (same sound?)
 Categorization (does not belong?)
 Rhyming
 Deletion (take out a sound?)

Phonemic awareness -> decoding -> comprehension

 Reading

Automaticity

Rate

Fluency

Comprehension
 Writing

Organization

Content

Spelling, grammar, usage...

 Math

Calculation
PE
MD
AS

Application
 Metacognition

Working memory

Executive control

Motivation

Attention
 Social behavior

More likely to have social skill deficits

NPR pieces
 Instruction

Accommodation
“good” instruction
P. 203-212