Access, Accommodation

1
Access, Accommodation Good Teaching

• Integrating Students withLearning Disabilities
• Presenters
• Elaine Beckett-Albert, Nipissing Student
• Kyle Parker, Nipissing Education Grad
• Tara Neville, Nipissing Canadore Grad
• Mike Walker, Learning Strategist
• Presented to Michelann Parrs AQ class, June 2003

2
Todays Agenda

• Define learning disabilities from an information
  processing perspective
• Examine how psychometric testing identifies and
  describes LDs
• Look at some scores

3
Todays Agenda

• Student Stories a personal perspective
• Elaine describes her
• working memory deficits
• sons non-verbal LD
• experience with integration withdrawal
• Kyle describes his
• attention deficit memory/visual/motor LD
• Tara describes her
• multiple disabilities
• Question How would you integrate/meet these
  students needs?

4
Todays Agenda

• Strategies for accommodation, integration
  success
• Great teaching
• Accommodating learner differences
• Universal Design for Learning
• Demystifying the disability
• Allowing the student some control over his/her
  learning environment

5
Thursdays Agenda

• Technology for students with learning disabilities

6
A Simple Model of Learning Information
Processing

• Attention
• Sensory Input
• Decoding
• Processing
• May include Storage
• and/or Retrieval processes
• Encoding
• Physical Output

7
A Learning Disability is an Information
Processing Impairment

• It is like having too many bridges out as well as
  too many overlapping pathways along the
  information highways of the brain.
• Dale R. Jordan
• U. of Arkansas

8
Where can IP break down? Dr. Allyson G.
Harrison, Queens University

• 1. Frontal lobe functioning deficits
• - abstract and conceptual thinking
• 2. Memory impairment
• - Short term memory
• - Working memory-mental blackboard dynamic
  process
• - Long term memory
• - Storage vs retrieval issues
• 3. Sequencing deficits (visual or auditory)

9
Breakdown continues Dr. Allyson G. Harrison,
Queens University

• 4. Speed of information processing
• 5. Attention
• - Selective (cannot choose/focus)
• - Sustained (cannot maintain)
• - Divided (cannot shift/hyperfocus)
• 6. Narrow processing style - cant
  simultaneously attend to process multiple
  aspects of a stimulus field

10
Still breaking down Dr. Allyson G. Harrison,
Queens University

• 7. Poor scanning resolution-miss relevant data
• 8. Right hemisphere dysfunction good at details
  but not global picture. Gets lost in details,
  easily overloaded. Cant make sense of
  holistically presented information. Poor ability
  to interpret visual cues.
• 9. Faulty output mechanism - interferes with
  demonstration of adequate information processing.

11
As a result, learners with LDs may have

• Difficulty with Alphabet/Penmanship
• Problems Expressing what is Known and Understood
• Problems in Personal Organization
• Difficulty in Copying/Note-Making
• Problems in Arithmetic
• Problems in Reading
• Slow Work Speed
• Problems with Time and Sequence
• Confusion in Spelling

12
For you visual learners

What does an LD look like? LDs from an
Information Processing perspective.
13
Average StudentTraditional Aptitude vs.
Achievement- normal scatter (normal differences)
14
Student with a LD (Reading)Aptitude vs.
Achievement significant differences
15
Visual Processing LD (Dyslexia) Aptitude,
Achievement Info Processing
16
Aptitude, Achievement, Info Processing Auditory
Processing LD (CAPD)
17
Tough Facts from LDAC

• 35 of students identified with learning
  disabilities drop out of high school.
• 50 of adolescent suicides had previously been
  diagnosed as having learning problems.
• Volumes of research have shown that 30 to 70 of
  young offenders have experienced learning
  problems.

Statistics on Learning Disabilities. LDAC,
October 2001. Source Online http//www.ldac-taac
.ca/english/indepth/bkground/stats01.htm
18
Meet our students

• Elaines Story
• Kyles Story
• Taras Story

19
Tales from the Trenches

• a Grade 4 Class

20
Tales from the Trenches

• Class of 26 students
• 11 exceptional students
• 8 identified
• 3 assessed and diagnosed but not IDd
• 3 more need testing
• Class profile
• 1 profound epilepsy brain injury
• 1 hearing impaired LD
• 7 LD
• 1 AD/HD 1 ADD LD

21
What About the Kids?3 Tales from the Trenches

• Adam (grade 4) reading disability (pre. board)
• reading at grade 1 level, highly frustrated
  resistant to learning
• resistant to resource, so accommodated in the
  classroom
• up two levels, completed grade level work,
  independent research project, class leader
• end of the year comment to John
• now in Grade 5 back in resource, same phonics
  workbooks, etc. shut down
• teachers, perhaps afraid of technology, but have
  also bought into the myth that if students learn
  differently, they wont make it in the real
  world

22
What About the Kids?3 Tales from the Trenches

• Eve (grade 4) gifted with an LD
• worked very hard but no significant
  ability/achievement discrepancy so parents paid
  for assessment
• performing just below grade level
• works harder than all of her classmates
• remediation every night thru Oxford LC
• principal wont allow identification IEP
  monitoring
• recently caught cheating in spelling in French
• I wanted to get them right just once.
• should she be allowed to experience success?
• strategy Report Card accommodating her
  learning disability according to the
  psychological assessment

23
What About the Kids?3 Tales from the Trenches

• Ruth (grade 4) not yet diagnosed
• problems with math
• probably non-verbal LD problems with drawing,
  visual/spatial awareness, awkward, late reader
• goes to Kumon Math every night
• nightly math sheet (10 20 min) may take 2 hours
  with parents help
• teacher warned not to rock the boat (not to ID)
• so teacher removed classroom accommodation
  resulting failure allowed teacher to contact
  parents parents influential in community and
  parent council
• letters flew testing has begun shook up
  resource team 5 kids will now benefit from 1st
  math program

24
What you can do . . .

• How can a classroom teacher support a student
  with a learning disability?

25
Be a GREAT teacher

• Use multi-modal teaching techniques, offer valid
  performance and evaluation alternatives, and
• remember . . .

26
We Learn... William Glasser

• 10 of what we read
• 20 of what we hear
• 30 of what we see
• 50 of what we both see and hear
• 70 of what is discussed with others
• 80 of what we experience personally
• 95 of what we teach someone else

27
Or Simply

• Tell me and I will forget
• Show me and I may remember
• Involve me and I will understand
• Ancient Chinese proverb

28
Teach Academic/Learning Skills Topics from
UNIV1011

• How We Learn
• Learning Styles
• Time Management
• Active Listening Notetaking
• Active Reading
• Writing Strategies
• Critical Creative Thinking

• Test Taking Evaluation
• Attitude Motivation
• Self-Determination Self-Advocacy
• Teamwork Rapport
• Energy Stress
• Health Wellness

29
What you can do . . .

• Provide Access to Curriculum and Accommodation

30
Follow the principles of UIDHeli Wynne

• Universal Instructional Design
• . . . curriculum is accessible to all students,
  regardless of their learning style or the
  presence of learning and/or other disabilities.
• or . . .

31
Universal Design for Learning (CAST description)

• UDL shifts old assumptions about teaching and
  learning in four fundamental ways
• Source online Center for Applied Special
  Technology (CAST), www.cast.org/udl/

32
UDL basic concepts (CAST)

• Students with disabilities fall along a continuum
  of learner differences rather than constituting a
  separate category
• Teacher adjustments for learner differences
  should occur for all students, not just those
  with disabilities

33
UDL basic concepts (CAST)

• Curriculum materials should be varied and diverse
  including digital and online resources, rather
  than centering on a single textbook
• Instead of remediating students so that they can
  learn from a set curriculum, curriculum should be
  made flexible to accommodate learner differences

34
For more about UDL see

• CASTs Universal Design for Learning site
• http//www.cast.org/udl/
• Online textbook
• Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age
  Universal Design for Learning. David H. Rose
  Anne Meyer ASCD, 2002
• www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/

35
More about accommodating individual student
differences

• PBS documentary, Misunderstood Minds
• http//www.pbs.org/wgbh/misunderstoodminds/intro.h
  tml
• Check out the work of Dr. Mel Levine
• His organizations website
• www.allkindsofminds.orq
• A Mind at a Time, Chapter 1
• http//www.allkindsofminds.org/bookExcerpts/aMinda
  tATime.aspx

36
What Can You Do?

• Demystify the learning disability
• Include the student in identification
• Explain the students strengths and weaknesses
• Help them to understand
• View clip from Misunderstood Minds
• Normalize the learning disability with the
  student and with the class

37
Paul Gerber onwhat you can do . . .

• Promote success through teaching
• self-advocacy
• self-awareness
• self-knowledge
• Dr. Paul Gerber, Pathways 2002

38
Characteristics of Successful Adults with LDs

• Gerber, Ginsberg, and Reiff. Learning to
  Achieve Suggestions from Adults with Learning
  Disabilities. Journal on Postsecondary Education
  and Disability.Source online www.ahead.org/publi
  cations/JPED/jped10-1-b.html

39
Their findings (n71)

• The driving factor underlying the success of the
  entire sample was an effort to gain control of
  their lives.
• Attaining control involved both internal
  decisions and external manifestations.

40
Control

• The issue of control is of special significance
  to individuals with learning disabilities.
• For many, a significant effect of learning
  disabilities was a sense of a taking away of
  control.

41
Control

• Especially in the school-age years, most
  respondents felt that they were not in charge of
  their lives
• instead, because they learned differently, they
  were consigned to special programs or told, in a
  variety of ways, that that they did not measure
  up to expectations

42
Gaining control

• a significant pattern was a high degree of
  preparation that the adults used to be ready to
  face any possible situation.
• A number remarked that they could not afford to
  be caught off-guard and consequently put forth
  extraordinary effort to predict all permutations
  of any situation.

43
Attaining control involved

• Internal Decisions
• Desire
• Goal Orientations (realistic in goal setting
  process)
• Reframing (of the learning disability experience)

• External Manifestations
• Persistence
• Learned Creativity
• Goodness of Fit (between abilities and work
  environment)
• Social Ecologies (use assistance of helpful,
  supportive people)

44
Predictors of Success in Adults with LD

• IQ or Achievement scores are at best MINOR
  predictors of success in adults with LD
• Six other factors were far BETTER PREDICTORS
  (Raskind et al, 1999)
• Dr. Marc Wilchesky, York University
• Pathways 2002

45
Predictors of Success in Adults with LD

• Self-awareness
• Proactivity
• Perseverance
• Goal Setting
• Emotional Stability
• Social Support Systems
• Raskind et al, 1999

46
So in review, you can

• Raise self-esteem by staying positive -- you may
  be the adult who makes a difference
• Include the student in the process
• Allow the student both access to and control over
  his/her learning environment
• Focus on strengths accommodate for weaknesses
• Teach learning strategies
• Use technological aids/software
• Encourage/teach social skills
• Offer positive, realistic feedback
• Fight for funding, assessment technology

47
More Info . . .

• On learning disabilities
• www.schwablearning.org
• www.ldonline.org
• www.ldpride.net
• www.ldao.on.ca
• www.ldrc.ca
• http//specialed.about.com/cs/learningdisabled
• Activities to help understand processing deficits
• http//www.pbs.org/wgbh/misunderstoodminds/
• Mikes Learning Resources site
• www.nipissingu.ca/faculty/mikew/resource

48
Questions?

• . . . thanks for this opportunity to share!

49
So how might an LD affect a Learner?

• A Couple of Examples . . .

50
Cant you read this?

• Myle arn in gdisa bi LI tyma kesit dif Ficu
  ltform eto re Adi tslo wsm edo wnwh eniha veto re
  AdmYte xtbo Ok sbu twhe nius Eboo kso Nta peo rco
  mpu Teri zedsc ree nrea Din gsof twa Reto lis
  tent Om yte xtbo ok sith elp sal Ot.

51
Cant you see this?

• Cant you see the Dalmatian?

52
Social Emotional Aspects of a Learning
Disability

• From Introducing Learning Disabilities to
  Postsecondary Educators
• The Meighen Centre for Learning Assistance and
  Research, Mount Allison University

53
What does a Learning Disability feel like?

• Ask someone who has one!

54
Possible Academic Problems

• silent reading/reading aloud
• writing/spelling
• learning languages/math
• expressing what is known and understood
• having to re-do school work at home
• having no time off since everything takes longer
• dropping out

55
Possible Social/Emotional Problems

• feeling dumb, stupid, embarrassed, frustrated,
  anxious, lonely, isolated
• being called stupid, lazy being put down by
  teachers, friends, and even parents
• feeling nobody understands
• feeling need of help
• fearing rejection failure
• always having to cover up, act a role

56
Possible Career/Vocational Problems

• lack of basic skills
• lack of social skills
• Its never cured, It never goes away
• having to cover up
• never feeling adequate
• low expectations
• jobs dont last

57
Technology for Students with Learning Disabilities

• Tools to help accommodate for information
  processing deficits

58
What Can Students with LDs Expect?

• Typical accommodations available to students with
  learning disabilities at the post-secondary level

59
Test/Exam Accommodation

• Common
• extra time
• spell checker
• use of a computer
• distraction-free environment
• leniency towards spelling grammar

• Less Common
• reader
• scribe
• e-reader
• voice dictation

60
Classroom/Lecture Accommodation

• Common
• tape recorder
• note-sharer/taker
• use of overheads/ visual organizer
• Alpha-Smart/lap-top computer/Pocket PC

• Less Common
• FM system
• wait time when called upon
• lecture notes on reserve/on web
• lecture outline in advance

61
Personal Study Accommodation

• master notebook
• organizer
• talking spell checker
• texts on tape
• tape/digital recorder
• computer
• scanner
• e-reader/e-texts
• voice dictation
• reduced course load

• study buddy
• study carrels
• mentor
• academic skills
• peer tutor
• professional tutor
• technology training
• learning strategy training based on LD assessment

62
BSWD Bursary for Students With Disabilities

• This year up to 10, 000
• Tied to OSAP eligibility
• For disability-related educational expenses
  assessments, computers assistive software,
  adaptive devices, tutoring, therapy, ergonomic
  devices, etc.
• NOT for tuition, books, residence, etc.