Written and designed by the staff of the Center for Teaching and Learning. Reproduce with permission only.
Like students with other disabilities,
students with documented learning disabilities are expected to fulfill the same
requirements as all other students admitted to UNC. However, learning disabled
students may need to modify how they fulfill those requirements. There
is an office on campus established to help these students. If you have students
with such disabilities in your classroom you may have some contact with this
office and can take advantage of the assistance they offer:
Learning Disabilities Services (LDS)
(Bank of America Building, Suite 602)
2-7227
Students with learning disabilities can greatly benefit when the teacher takes a little extra time and thought to accommodate their needs. These students may need accommodations in some classroom activities, assignments and exams. The office of Learning Disabilities Services (LDS) will work closely with instructors to aid and assist identified students.
This chapter discusses general issues of pedagogy concerning the teaching of students with a learning disability. In this chapter, we will also discuss the various kinds of situations that could arise in your course and suggest ways to approach these situations.
The term "learning disability"
(LD) came into use in the 1960s. The National Joint Committee on Learning
Disabilities (1994) defines LDs as:
a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, or mathematical abilities. These disorders are intrinsic to the individual, presumed to be due to central nervous system dysfunction and may occur across the life span. Problems in self-regulatory behaviors, social perception, and social interaction may exist with learning disabilities but do not by themselves constitute a learning disability. Although learning disabilities may occur concomitantly with other handicapping conditions (for example, sensory impairment, mental retardation, serious emotional disturbance) or with extrinsic influences (such as cultural differences, insufficient or inappropriate instruction), they are not the result of these conditions or influences.
Learning disabilities affect how a person perceives and processes information. Most people with learning disabilities show a significant gap between their abilities in different skill areas. Two other conditions, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) also affect the ability to learn, and students with these conditions are also served by the LDS office. ADD is a condition characterized by severe levels of inattention, impulsivity and/or hyperactivity. ABI is a disorder resulting from trauma to the brain, such as a car accident or stroke.
One common misperception about people who have a learning disability is that they are less intelligent than other people. In fact, people with learning disabilities can be academically gifted and highly motivated achievers. Any UNC student with a learning disability has had to meet all requirements for admission that students without LDs must meet. Moreover, instructional strategies that can help students with LDs are changes than can help all students in your classes to learn better. Making clear the course goals, emphasizing and summarizing the most important points of a lecture, presenting material in more than one way, and giving precise feedback on progress throughout the semester are all features that help all students achieve success.
A teacher cannot always be sure whether a particular student has a learning disability. For those students who have already been diagnosed and are eligible for services at LDS, you might receive a letter from LDS informing you that you have a student with a learning disability. Students must decide, however, whether or not they wish to inform their instructors. Some students (usually as a result of negative experiences) are reluctant to disclose their disability. Or, there may be a student in the class who has not yet been diagnosed. Although you might not know whether you have students with LDs in your class, you can already do these, and all other, students a great service by making sure you follow guidelines of good pedagogy. Establishing clear and feasible course goals, recycling and reviewing information and concepts, structuring opportunities for students to apply concepts as well as information, and giving continual and constructive feedback to help students improve will help all students learn better, not just those with disabilities. You might consider putting a statement in your syllabus encouraging any students with special learning needs to discuss them with you. By demonstrating your willingness to work with students, you are more likely to have students come to you.
If you observe a cluster of symptoms indicating that you have a student with a learning disability, communicate privately with that student about what you have observed and/or call LDS. The list on the next page shows the most prominent features of students with learning disabilities.
Do You Have A Student In Class Who...
Some students may show particular
anxiety about reading aloud in class or they may read very slowly, sometimes
tracing the words on the page with their fingers. Students with dyslexia may
see letters as transposed (a "d" will look like a "b" for
example), or may skip letters or words altogether. To understand just how much
this disability might interfere with a student's reading speed and comprehension,
try reading the following sentence:
He or she has aver ape or adove averape iwtellipence; so me of thw wore quenalvet sywgto ws appear to debis or hers of wotor ac tivity; bisorder sof ewotionalith; bisorbeRs of berceb tiou; bisorb era of coucegtion; d.sorner s of attentiow; bisorders of wewory.(1)
As you can imagine, for dyslexic
students, reading comprehension is often much easier when a text is delivered
orally. Choosing a "user-friendly" textbook that gives clear charts
and summaries and organizes concepts clearly can help many students who have
difficulty reading. Making your syllabus available as early as possible will
also help students who need to order their textbooks on tape.
Students with LDs may have very poor
handwriting and their papers may contain many cross-outs, write-overs, and erasures.
Dyslexic students may have difficulty spelling words, and may reverse the spelling
of words, writing "saw" instead of "was." Even more likely,
dyslexic students may have inconsistent spelling. Students with other
learning disabilities also make frequent spelling errors, but note that the
kind of errors they make are different from those made by students with poor
spelling but who do not have a learning disability:
| Common spelling errors | Characteristic LD spelling errors |
|---|---|
| "reverance" for "reverence" | "equiment" for "equipment" |
| "grammer" for "grammar" | "facecion" for "physician" |
| "museam" for "museum" | "presuse" for "precious" |
| "atitude" for "attitude" | "qutity" for "quantity" |
Students with an LD in written language
also tend to interchange homonyms, writing "sun" for "son"
or "two" for "too." Students with an LD in written language
may also misuse punctuation and may randomly place capital letters throughout
a paragraph. On a more serious level, some students with a writing LD can explain
ideas orally very well, but cannot write these ideas in a coherent way. They
may use odd, even illogical, conceptual connections and show poor organization.(2)
(2) The information on characteristics of LD students' writing comes from a handout distributed by UNC Learning Disabilities Services, adapted from Mary Kay Galotto, Montgomery College, Diagnostic/Prescriptive Learning Specialist.
Some students can understand information presented in one way, but not in others. For example, they may be able to understand a diagram but not an oral presentation. In fact, these students may have difficulty processing information that you have just covered in class if it is presented in a different form than the one they are comfortable with (orally vs. written form and vice-versa). Correspondingly, these students may also do better at certain kinds of exam questions, such as short answer versus multiple choice or vice-versa.
Because the students have difficulty processing information, they may ask you questions about information you have just finished explaining or need to ask the same question more than once. The student might ask questions that show a basic misunderstanding of a reading or lecture. These students might also have difficulty following directions on assignments and exams, misinterpreting questions or not seeing what kind of information the question is soliciting.
In writing out exam answers or papers, students may inadvertently reverse information in a way that seems illogical, saying that something "is a cause" when the student really means "is not."
Some students may show no difficulty
in understanding tests, but have difficulty finishing them in the allotted time.
This suggests difficulty with sorting information, reading or writing speed,
or memory problems.
A difficulty with information processing
may be exhibited in mathematical problems as well. The student may go about
solving a math problem in the right way, but frequently comes to an incorrect
answer because she or he has transposed numbers, treated negative numbers as
positive numbers, or added columns incorrectly. In writing, the student may
reverse numbers, writing "87" instead of "78." As with foreign
languages, students with an extremely severe disability in this area may petition
their school for permission to take a substitution course, but this is not easy
to do and the burden of proof is on the student (see below for foreign languages).
The student desiring to pursue this option should contact LDS or their school's
Dean.
There is still little research on
the relationship between learning disabilities and the inability to learn a
foreign language, but cases of students who spend hours studying, hiring tutors,
and meeting frequently with their teachers with no success are well documented.
Generally, a student with an inability to learn a foreign language is likely
to have some other learning disabilities, since learning disabilities interfere
with one's ability to process language. Although students at UNC (and at many
other institutions) with a significant disability in learning foreign languages
may be able to obtain permission to take a substitution course, this is not
a simple procedure and involves much documentation. If, as a foreign language
teacher, you notice a student having significant difficulties learning a foreign
language, consult with Learning Disabilities Services. For more information
on recent research in foreign language learning disabilities, consult Ganschow
and Sparks' "Foreign language learning disabilities" (1993), which
gives a list of foreign language classroom accommodations that may help students
with LDs. (p. 298-301).
ADD and ADHD can be medical diagnoses whereas a learning disability is always an educational one. But because they often interfere with a student's ability to learn, it is appropriate to consider them along with learning disabilities. While it is sometimes thought that only children have ADD, 30 to 70% of children with ADD continue to manifest symptoms into adulthood. (CH.A.D.D., 1993) These adults may have difficulty concentrating and may be distracted easily.
Students with ADHD are likely to
exhibit motor restlessness (foot-tapping, shifting in seat) and may have difficulty
focusing on information for long periods of time. The student may also be impatient
and have difficulty delaying impulsive behavior. While some students receive
medical treatment for ADHD, not all adults respond to drug therapy.
If you suspect that you have a student with a learning disability based on your observations of his/her performance in your course, you might first call LDS to talk to them about your "diagnosis." Then, discuss it with the student. Although teachers may be concerned about how to broach the subject of learning disabilities with a student, it is much more harmful for the problem to go unchecked, since it may result in the student's failure in this course and poor performance or failure in other courses. The staff at LDS will be glad to advise you on how to approach the student and can help you to determine whether the symptoms you have observed are indeed indicative of a learning disability. You do not need to give the name of the student, and LDS guarantees the student's privacy.
LDS suggests that you take the following
steps in broaching the subject of learning disabilities with a student:
1) Emphasize the positive aspects of the student's performance and note your concern that these aspects are inconsistent with other aspects of the student's work that you have observed.
2) Be very specific about your observations, emphasizing the patterns of errors that you have noticed.
3) Rather than announcing that you believe the student may have a disability, present the topic in a general way to the student. Ask the student whether she or he is aware of these patterns. It may well be that you have a student who is already aware of having a learning disability. If this is the case, ask whether she or he is aware of the services LDS offers and provide the phone number if not.
4) If the student does not disclose him or herself as having a learning disability, the teacher might simply suggest possible resources the student can explore in order to address the patterns of difficulty. Tell the student that there is a Learning Skills Center (Phillips Annex) that offers both individual and group sessions on various skills such as note-taking and taking exams. In addition, the Writing Center counsels students individually on various writing skills and can help students to revise their drafts. Furthermore, a student can pursue testing at the Counseling & Wellness Service in the James A. Taylor building. A psychologist may determine whether the student should be assessed for LDs or be referred to Psychological Services at Student Health, to be examined for ADD or ADHD.
Although you may be concerned about
offending the student, if you make the student aware of a disability, you are
doing him or her a great service. The student might not even act on your suggestion
immediately, but you have planted the seed. If indeed the student is found to
have an LD, he or she will be able to benefit from the services LDS provides.
Services Offered by Learning Disabilities Services (LDS)
Once a teacher knows that there is
a student with an LD in class, the teacher's rapport with the student can be
vital to helping the student succeed. Because learning disabilities vary greatly
from person to person, in this section we discuss general pedagogical techniques
to use when teaching students with LDs. Find out how much the student knows
about his or her disability. Students who have known about their LDs for a long
time are often able to say what works well and what does not. Do not assume,
however, that a student with a documented LD will necessarily be able to explain
his/her specific disability in great detail.
Having a learning disability also
implies having a learning ability. Students with LDs at UNC are admitted on
their own merits (there is no ceiling, nor does the University lower its academic
standards when admitting these students). Although students with LDs at UNC
may have difficulties with particular kinds of learning, they have developed
effective coping skills in order to succeed. If you examine your own history
as a student, you will probably be able to recall kinds of learning situations
that you preferred and which seemed more "natural" for you than others.
Thus, although we will discuss specific accommodations you can make upon finding
out (or suspecting) that you have a student with a learning disability, remembering
to take advantage of students' diverse abilities and not to overemphasize
their disabilities will help them to excel in their studies.
Specialists in learning disabilities have increasingly observed that some people with LDs may experience social difficulties as well. Some of these include difficulties working effectively with others; behaving appropriately in given social situations; expressing opinions and feelings; understanding humor or sarcasm; and relating to authority figures. (Mangrum and Streichart, 1984, p. 30) While it is not the teacher's primary responsibility to counsel the student, it is important to understand that such difficulties may be a function of a disability and not simply an "attitude problem." Always assume good faith on the part of the student and have a private talk if you notice behaviors that interfere with learning or disrupt the class environment.
The teacher cannot assume that a
student will come forward by him or herself. LDS strongly encourages students
to disclose their disabilities at the beginning of the semester, but this choice
is up to each student. Many students, particularly if they suffer from low self-esteem
or lack of confidence, are unlikely to seek out their teachers for help. You
are doing the student a favor by raising the issue. Says one student with a
learning disability:
"Be aware of how students are reacting in class. Be really conscious of the type of work that they're turning in. I'm not embarrassed that I have a learning disability, but I don't tell everybody. I've been lucky in that teachers have taken a personal interest in me, because if they do see a problem, they usually come to me and approach me about it."
Because students with LDs may lack
confidence in themselves and may be wary of speaking in front of others, it
can help to establish a good one-on-one relationship with the student. Do not
ignore students with LDs and think that you are sparing them embarrassment.
By not calling on them, the teacher sends a signal that only confirms their
worst fears about their inadequacies. Talking with the student outside of class
and seeing whether you can establish strategies with which you are both comfortable
will help the student most. Look for opportunities where the student can demonstrate
existing knowledge. Paying attention to ideas the student conveys in writing
or in some other way outside of class and asking the student to share those
ideas will enhance his or her self-confidence and maximize this student's in-class
participation. A student in a foreign language class appreciated his teacher's
effort to keep informed on what skills he had mastered before asking him to
demonstrate it orally in class in front of other students:
"One of the things she would do is that if we were going over something in class, and I hadn't gone over it with my tutor, she wouldn't call on me because she felt that it would put me on the spot- The next class, she would call on me."
The teacher was not ignoring the
student, but rather was choosing to call on the student at those moments that
were most likely to result in a positive performance. This is an effective technique
for any student who is shy or lacks confidence. By building the student's confidence
in this way, it is more likely that the student will eventually be able to venture
answers to new questions. The student may even come to volunteer in class.
Many students with LDs have difficulty remembering information or applying concepts to new material. All students benefit from review of major concepts throughout the semester and from multiple opportunities to apply concepts to new situations. At the end of each class period, summarizing the main points is a good technique for ensuring students' retention of material generally. Also, review points from the previous lesson at the beginning of a class. Ask students questions like "Remember when we talked about ________? How could we use that idea to apply to what we have been discussing today?"
Taking notes is often difficult for students generally, and especially so for many students with LDs. Speaking at a moderate pace and enunciating clearly will help them. Use body language and voice modulations to emphasize important points. Writing only the key ideas on the board will help the students to copy and retain the most important points, and not risk confusing them with side issues. Provide handouts or write on the board when you introduce new terms or concepts. In order to prepare students for discussion, give reading questions ahead of time so that you reinforce students' learning during class.
For students with severe difficulties
in note-taking, LDS can help the student to contact a note taker (a student
in the class) who will give copies of the notes to LDS. These notes supplement
notes the student takes. The disabled student is expected to attend all classes,
and in the event that a student frequently misses class, LDS will not furnish
the student with the supplementary notes.
The transition from high school to college is difficult for most students because most college courses rely on a high degree of independent learning. Teachers frequently assign large projects to be completed at the end of the semester which the student must work on independently throughout the semester. In many cases students receive little feedback early in the semester. Try whenever possible to structure feedback throughout the course. For example, if the students must complete a large research paper at the end of the semester, have smaller assignments that will allow students to practice micro-skills they will need to succeed in the large project. Ask for outlines or proposals of papers and discuss them with students well before the due date. Allow students to present you with a first draft for feedback so that they can improve the final version.
Announcing due dates for assignments in both oral and written form will help everyone in class. All requirements for the assignments should be indicated clearly. Bolding or highlighting the most important information for greater visibility will avoid confusion. Furthermore, offer suggestions for stages of completing the project and for the amount of time you estimate the students will need for each stage.
Try to prepare students for papers
and other assignments by giving them questions to help them in their reading.
One student with an LD explained some of his frustration with how to apply his
reading to his assignments:
"It would have helped me to prepare for the readings to know what to go after. In that class we had six books. The last paper I had to write was to compare two of them. That was a lot of reading to go back over."
The teacher does not need to give students actual paper topics before they read, but by giving them some overall guiding questions, the teacher will help students to identify the information which will be most useful to them later when they must work on their assignments.
When making assignments, establish
the parameters of successful answers. In a literature paper, for example, it
is useful to tell students explicitly that you do not want plot summary but
that you do want some examples of quotes from the text. Giving students examples
of good answers to discuss and even practice in class will make the assignment
clearer to everyone. Students find hands-on practice more helpful than a simple
handout. In science and math classes, it is most useful to begin work on problems
very soon after the topic is introduced. Word problems are very difficult for
most students, and can be doubly so for students with a learning disability.
Working out word problems takes practice. Assign them throughout the semester,
and take the time to check them in class so that the students understand the
process of solving such problems long before they must take the exam. If you
feel that you have insufficient time for this kind of practice, schedule times
outside of class during which all students can come.
A concern teachers often have when they have a student with an LD is how to help the student without lowering course standards. A teacher's job is to make sure that the student meets the course goals, but that reasonable accommodations that will reduce the barriers imposed by a disability are provided.
The most common accommodation for administering tests to students with LDs is allotting extra time (usually twice the allotted time). Some teachers argue that allowing students such extra time is unfair to other students. However, according to Runyan's research (1991), when LD students are given extra time for testing reading comprehension, their scores improve, but when non-LD students are given extra time, there is no change in performance. This means that a timed test often does not test comprehension of material. Instead, it tests the rate of the individual reader's speed. Ask yourself to what extent it is really important that the student demonstrate knowledge in a specific time allotment. Remember that by making speed of completion a criterion for evaluation, you privilege not students' knowledge and grasp of concepts, but students' ease with timed testing.
Other accommodations that LDS may
determine and provide to students with LDs include having students take exams
on a computer rather than writing them by hand, working with a reader, or dictating
their answers verbatim to a scribe. All accommodations are determined based
on each student's documented disability. Students who are easily distracted
may take their exams at LDS, which can provide a quiet, distraction-free room.
While the student is taking the test, there are staff members who periodically
check the test room, and during finals, they proctor the exam closely. A teacher
may stop by at LDS to talk to a student while an exam is administered, but instructors
may not enter the exam room, since this could distract other students. All students
who take their tests at LDS must submit a form on which the teacher states which
materials students are allowed to use while taking the test.
The primary concern when designing an exam is to test the concepts, skills, and information that have been emphasized in the course. An exam should offer students as many opportunities as possible to demonstrate their ability. Offer some variation in the kinds of questions asked. Some students perform better on essay questions than on multiple choice questions. Some students feel more at ease with imaginative rather than formal questions. For example, in an essay question on American history, you could design a question which asks students to imagine they are the curators of an exhibit on World War II for the Smithsonian for which they must justify their choice of display items to a committee. This kind of question gives students the feeling of participating in a "hands-on" project. Allowing them to speak in the voice of a curator, rather than simply as a student in the class may lessen some of their anxiety about expressing themselves. In cases of students who have demonstrated an inability to perform certain kinds of testing (such as multiple choice) you may want to make an alternate test for the student. LDS will be glad to work with you on test formatting if you contact them.
Try as much as possible to inform students of the exam format and what portions receive the most points. Most teachers find that all students worry about this aspect of exams, and appreciate the prior information. Telling students that you will have a 30-point short-answer section, a 20-point brief essay section, and a 50-point long essay question will allay fears and help them to prepare most efficiently. Give students some degree of choice in essay topics so that students can choose the topic about which they feel the most confident.
Avoid giving questions or instructions that are grammatically or syntactically complicated. Constructions (such as double negatives, questions within questions, or embedded phrases) will only serve to bewilder the student without testing actual information important to the class.
Teachers find that providing review sessions during which students learn how to take the test improves overall performance. Give sample questions and answers so that you show students what kind of answer you expect. Although teachers sometimes get annoyed when students say "I don't know what you're looking for," students are simply speaking from their experience of having different teachers who all had different, and perhaps contradictory, expectations. Each new teacher presents them with a semester-long study of new hidden assumptions and expectations. Making expectations explicit will help all students retain the most important information and perform better on exams.
When grading exams, the instructor
should not deduct heavily for spelling and punctuation mistakes unless spelling
and punctuation are essential to one of the course goals. For students with
LDs in particular, editing what they have written while under time pressure
can be very difficult.
Paying attention not only to the concepts and skills you are trying to emphasize in the course, but also to the ways the student is attempting to learn these will be most profitable to the student. In many cases, the teacher can be a valuable resource to the student by helping to show more effective learning strategies so that students learn how to learn. For students with LDs in particular, skills such as "planning, monitoring, regulating, and scheduling" are often difficult (Brinckerhoff, Shaw and McGuire, 1993, p. 252). Such students may have difficulty writing a paper not because of procrastination, but because of lack of effective time management and difficulty in setting priorities. These are some of the strategies that LDS works closely with students to develop. The teacher can also help the student by targeting the student's area of difficulty and suggesting a strategy to compensate.
When a student asks "How should I study?" suggest specific strategies to help him or her remember and apply course concepts. Telling a student to "go over your notes and make sure you understand all the readings" will not be helpful because it does not tell how to actively practice skills which will be tested. People sometimes believe that studying is something one just does. But everyone has particular study and learning skills, whether or not one is aware of them. For many students, effective methods of studying may not be self-evident. Consider the Spanish teacher who is advising a student how to study for a quiz. The advice "go over your vocabulary list at the end of the chapter" may seem like good advice. But what does it mean to "go over" this list? Instead, the teacher might suggest that the student write words on notecards and literally test himself by looking at the English word first and trying to remember its Spanish equivalent. This retrieval process more closely mirrors the active process the student will experience while taking the test (or traveling in Mexico!) as opposed to looking passively at the list as a whole. Similarly, telling students to "go over" formulas at the end of the math chapter may not be useful to the student. Instead, give a handout of sample problems that use the formulas instead of relying simply on rote memorization. Then turn the tables by challenging the students to write problems for each other. Encouraging them to work in study teams to work out the answers will also result in a deeper understanding of the material.
General Guidelines for Teaching Students with LDs
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Last Updated: January 30, 2001