Emotional Disorders and Learning Disabilities in the Elementary Classroom

Interactions and Interventions

Jean Cheng Gorman

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781632209726
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Inklusive Bildung

This unique book focuses on the interaction of learning disabilities and emotional disorders, fostering an understanding of how learning problems affect emotional well-being, and vice-versa. Jean Cheng Gorman provides research-based, classroom-tested practical interventions teachers can integrate into their daily routines, to help students become more purposeful and more effective. This book serves as a resource and a practical classroom guide for all elementary school teachers who are presented with the challenges of addressing the multiple needs - academic, emotional and social - of children with learning disabilities and emotional problems. Part I presents an overview of common learning disabilities and emotional problems. What disorders are teachers most likely to encounter? When should educators intervene, and when should they seek help from others? Part II offers specific classroom interactions and interventions, including insights on how: - Learning disorders are associated with emotional problems
- Emotional problems can hide learning disabilities
- Learning disorders can exacerbate emotional conditions
- Emotional problems can intensify learning disabilities
- Emotional health enhances learning... and each chapters includes tangible steps teachers can take in their classroom, as well as reproducibles that can be used as is, or as a starting point for materials development. The book ends with a rich and up-to-date list of additional resources for teachers and an annotated bibliography of children's books and materials. Elementary teachers, administrators, and professional development directors can use this unique and comprehensive book as a solid foundation of knowledge and a practical resource for intervention.

PART I

Overview of Learning Disabilities and Emotional Disorders

1

COMMON LEARNING DISABILITIES

Referrals for Edgar to be tested for learning difficulties had been made in both first and second grade, but his mother did not want testing done. . . . By January [of third grade], she became concerned, because her first grade son was now reading and writing better than Edgar was.

—Sarah Ascheman

Third-grade teacher
2 years of teaching experience
Culver City, California

As teachers, you have the noble task of introducing new concepts to children, making the unfamiliar familiar and the incomprehensible understandable. All children have difficulties mastering new material at some point. However, for most children, these problems are transient and do not fit any consistent pattern. For others, learning is a greater challenge because of deficits in core areas such as language, mathematics, and reasoning.

The term learning disabilities is a broad term that has been used to encompass problems with language, mathematics, and writing; visual and perceptual problems; and attention or behavior problems. But just what constitutes a learning disability? Some researchers focus on identifying distinct neuropsychological profiles (see Ward, Ward, Glutting, & Hatt, 1999), attempting to find a very scientific or medical definition. Others, such as social constructivists, suggest that the term is inappropriate and inadequate for describing the learning processes of students, because it fails to take into account the “whole child” in an authentic context (see O’Shea, O’Shea, & Algozzine, 1998).

Most educators define learning disabilities according to federal law. The U.S. Office of Education and Public Law 101-476 (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) defines “specific learning disabilities” as

a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, which may manifest itself in imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations. The term includes such conditions as perceptual handicaps, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. The term does not include children who have learning disabilities which are primarily the result of visual, hearing or motor handicaps, or mental retardation, or emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage. (U.S. Office of Education, 1977, p. 65083)

Although debate over operationalizing this definition continues, a significant discrepancy between achievement and intellectual ability (as measured by performance on achievement and intelligence tests) is used by many states to identify a student as learning disabled (Mercer, King-Sears, & Mercer, 1990). Some consider at least 2 standard deviations between intellectual ability and academic functioning to be significant. This means that a child whose IQ is 100 (average) would need to score below the 9th percentile for his or her age on diagnostic tests in order to be diagnosed with a learning disability. Most children with learning disabilities have average intelligence but achieve far below what is expected for their age and intelligence (Smith & Luckasson, 1995). True learning disabilities are thought to be lifelong disorders (Schonhaut & Satz, 1983).

This chapter presents a brief overview of learning disorders that may be encountered in the classroom. It is certainly not an exhaustive presentation of learning disabilities, and other works, such as introductory textbooks by Lerner (1993) and O’Shea et al. (1998), present more in-depth information. Although this chapter describes discrete areas of learning disabilities, it is important to bear in mind that many children may have elements of several areas of difficulty that do not fall neatly into the categories featured here. At the same time, several learning problems can stem from a global learning disability, as in the second case study.

READING

Reading disabilities are likely what comes to mind when you think of learning disabilities. Problems with reading can involve many areas, including word recognition and comprehension, oral reading fluency, and reading comprehension (O’Shea et al., 1998). Within each of these areas, numerous skills are needed to successfully read. For example, comprehending a passage involves noting important details, identifying the main idea, tracking a sequence of events or steps, drawing inferences and conclusions, organizing ideas, and applying what is read (Lerner, 1993). Students may have difficulty in any of these higherorder skill areas, although their basic reading skills are intact.

The term dyslexia has often been used to refer to reading disabilities, and is a familiar term for many people. Some have overused it to describe all problems with reading and writing or have misunderstood it to be a problem with letter reversals (e.g., writing a “b” instead of a “d”). Others believe the term is obsolete and does not reflect more holistic concepts in language (Myers & Hammill, 1990). Still others say that dyslexia is a highly specific disability, partly genetic (Pennington, 1991), likely based in neurological (brain) abnormalities (Bakker, 1992), and does not apply to all children with language-based learning problems.

Despite the controversy, as a type of reading disability, dyslexia is well researched and, relative to other learning disability subtypes, well understood. The core problem area is in phonological processing (Shaywitz, 1996). There are a total of 44 phonemes in the English language. Different combinations of these small sound units make up words. For example, “kuh,” “aah,” and “tuh” can be combined to form the word cat. A child with dyslexia may have trouble distinguishing between phonemes when they are put together. Alternatively, a child may struggle to combine phonemes into words when writing. Reading becomes a chore because of difficulty identifying the sound units that make up the words. Spelling and writing are challenging for the same reason. Decoding exercises and identifying the number of syllables in a word are exceptionally difficult for children with dyslexia.

Recent neuroscience research raises the possibility that people with dyslexia also have an underlying processing speed deficit in addition to their phonological difficulties (Azar, 2000). It may be that people with dyslexia process sounds more slowly than average, making it difficult to distinguish phonemes. This provides additional explanation for why people with dyslexia have problems with reading and spoken language, which are commonly very rapid activities.

Children who are dyslexic may not have problems with speech, but may struggle with interpreting what they hear. For instance, because of their phonological processing problems, they may not be able to tell the word pat from bat. As a result, children with ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Classroom Interventions
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Part I. Overview of Learning Disabilities and Emotional Disorders
• Part II. Classroom Interactions and Interventions
• Resource A: Additional Resources
• Resource B: Annotated Bibliography of Children’s Books and Materials
• References
• Index