Students with learning disabilities (LD) often have difficulty with language. This difficulty takes many forms. They might have trouble understanding what you say. This could be the result of auditory problems (difficulty processing sounds) or receptive language difficulties (trouble understanding the words and turning them into action or pictures). Students with LD may also have difficulty speaking due to trouble forming their thoughts, attaching words to concepts, putting words in the right order, and many other reasons.
These language–based difficulties are compounded when students with learning disabilities are English language learners. This article will make some suggestions for making your classroom more inviting for all students who have difficulties with language.
Here are the suggestions:
Speak slowly, clearly, and naturally. If your pace tends to be fast, focus on ensuring that each syllable is clear, rather than trying to speak slowly. Try using shorter sentences. Ask your students to signal you if you are speaking too quickly.
Face your students and avoid putting your hand in front of your face. People sometimes want to see the face and lips of person they are struggling to understand.
Where practical, turn off machines that create background noise. For example, if one of your neon lights is making a loud buzz, ask maintenance to fix it. Ask administrators to avoid placing classrooms with students with learning disabilities next to noisy classrooms such as the gym.
Be careful when you use idioms such as "caught with your pants down" or "back seat driver." Students with LD, especially those who are English language learners, may not understand these expressions or may take them literally. ELL students may also have reactions to these phrases that are specific to their culture.
Tone of voice, facial expression and gestures may be misunderstood by students with learning disabilities (LD). Students with LD often have difficulty processing these signals. Those who are English language learners also come from different cultures, so a gesture might have a different meaning for them. While it is important to speak naturally, recognize that if you are sarcastic, some students in your class may not understand your intended meaning. Use words to reinforce your body language when you need the class to know how you feel.
When you ask a person with a learning disability a question, they will often hesitate before they answer the question because they need to make sure they heard the words in order, and they need to translate the words into concepts. In addition, they may need time to form their thoughts and turn them into words. Allow a silent period between your question and their answer. Do not give hints or answer the question for them until they show or say that they need help.
Supplement language in your classes with pictures, manipulative objects, kinesthetic activities, and other ways of teaching that use all of the senses.
Tell your students when something is particularly important. You might want to say something like "A key point is..." Use the same (or at least similar) phrase, tone of voice and gesture every time.
Allow and encourage students to tape–record your classes. Many students with language difficulties listen to the words several times and review the tape for main points.
If possible, provide a written outline of your talk. This will help any student with language problems prepare for class and know where to place their listening focus.
Some teachers are afraid that following these suggestions will make them sound dull. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, by taking the time to incorporate these strategies into your teaching, you will help many more students become engaged, active participants. This includes not only students with LD, but other students as well. For example, all English language learners, even those without learning disabilities, will benefit from strategies that focus on making language clearer and more comprehensible.
Although incorporating these suggestions may take some extra effort, you will find that practice will make it easier. You may have to plan ahead more, but using these strategies will enable students to learn from you who once were not able to understand you. Some students who were excluded from your class will be included. And that is what good teaching is all about.
reference:Brown, Dale S. and Ford, Karen. (2007, September).
BERUSAHA...BERWAWASAN...BERJAYA!
Saturday, February 26, 2011
The Tendency to Choose Intrinsic Explanations
A kindergarten teacher asked me to observe a student in her class. She was concerned that this child was not able to discriminate initial consonant sounds in words. When I arrived, I was impressed with her class. All the students were very engaged in engaged in learning, and she made instruction comprehensible through the use of visuals, manipulatives, pictures, and many gestures and facial expressions to accompany what she said. I noticed that the children had dictated a language experience story about their school routines, and the teacher had written out the entire story on large chart paper. The dictated story was being used as a meaningful context to teach some skills to the students.
The day I visited the class, the teacher concentrated on initial consonant sounds that I could observe the ELL student in question. She asked the students to think of words from the story that started with the /t/ sound. The students "read" aloud the story they had dictated and stopped when they heard words that started with the /t/ sounds. She asked what that word meant, and the students took turns answering orally or with gestures, then they moved on to the next example. It was great to hear the students read their story. I was watching the ELL student in her class. He seemed very attentive and paid close attention to everything in the lesson.
Afterward, she asked different students to tell the class a word that started with the /t/ sound. The native English-speaking students gave examples: "tooth, treat, tower," they yelled. Finally the ELL child raised his hand. The teacher asked if he had a word that started with the /t/ sound, and he nodded yes. "Maestra" he blurted out confidently. She looked at me with a great deal of concern. She asked him if he was sure, and he said yes. She gently pointed out that the word he had mentioned started with the /m/ sound. The ELL student seemed confused, and looked down at the carpet.
After the lesson, the teacher and I had an opportunity to talk about what happened. She was glad that I had witnessed the student's difficulty. What I told her that maestra was Spanish for "teacher," her eyes opened wide and she shook her head. We realized that the student had understood exactly what the teacher was asking of him, but he didn't speak enough English yet to say all the words he understood. I assured her that it is common for second language learners to have a larger receptive vocabulary than expressive. The teacher's face lit up with this realization. She had thought that she was not getting through to the student and didn't know what else to do. She was beginning to doubt herself and started to think that his difficulties must be due to something intrinsic.
I told her that it is always a good idea to get support from ESL/bilingual staff when she had concerns about any ELL student. I suggested that she continue to find ways to assess what her students knew separately from their ability to tell her in English. She immediately thought of an example. "What if during that exercise I had given the students visuals to use in supporting their oral answers? Also, I could have allowed them to share their answers through gestures." Even if her ELL had answered in his native language, she would have known that he understood because he would have shown her a picture of a teacher or pointed at her when he said maestra.
The day I visited the class, the teacher concentrated on initial consonant sounds that I could observe the ELL student in question. She asked the students to think of words from the story that started with the /t/ sound. The students "read" aloud the story they had dictated and stopped when they heard words that started with the /t/ sounds. She asked what that word meant, and the students took turns answering orally or with gestures, then they moved on to the next example. It was great to hear the students read their story. I was watching the ELL student in her class. He seemed very attentive and paid close attention to everything in the lesson.
Afterward, she asked different students to tell the class a word that started with the /t/ sound. The native English-speaking students gave examples: "tooth, treat, tower," they yelled. Finally the ELL child raised his hand. The teacher asked if he had a word that started with the /t/ sound, and he nodded yes. "Maestra" he blurted out confidently. She looked at me with a great deal of concern. She asked him if he was sure, and he said yes. She gently pointed out that the word he had mentioned started with the /m/ sound. The ELL student seemed confused, and looked down at the carpet.
After the lesson, the teacher and I had an opportunity to talk about what happened. She was glad that I had witnessed the student's difficulty. What I told her that maestra was Spanish for "teacher," her eyes opened wide and she shook her head. We realized that the student had understood exactly what the teacher was asking of him, but he didn't speak enough English yet to say all the words he understood. I assured her that it is common for second language learners to have a larger receptive vocabulary than expressive. The teacher's face lit up with this realization. She had thought that she was not getting through to the student and didn't know what else to do. She was beginning to doubt herself and started to think that his difficulties must be due to something intrinsic.
I told her that it is always a good idea to get support from ESL/bilingual staff when she had concerns about any ELL student. I suggested that she continue to find ways to assess what her students knew separately from their ability to tell her in English. She immediately thought of an example. "What if during that exercise I had given the students visuals to use in supporting their oral answers? Also, I could have allowed them to share their answers through gestures." Even if her ELL had answered in his native language, she would have known that he understood because he would have shown her a picture of a teacher or pointed at her when he said maestra.
Studies Show Stuttering Has Complex, Interrelated Roots By Sarah D. Sparks
When the Academy Awards show airs on Sunday, Texas speech therapist Lana Dodgen will be rooting for “The King’s Speech,” up for a dozen Oscars for its depiction of British King George VI’s struggle with stuttering.
Ms. Dodgen, who runs the Mesquite Independent School District’s chapter of the National Stuttering Association’s children’s-support group, said she and other advocates hope the film will bring awareness to stuttering the way “Rain Man” did to autism. The movie has already drawn broad interest in the disorder, which affects about 5 percent of preschoolers at some point in their language development and leaves 1 percent, or more than 3 million Americans, permanently struggling to speak.
Yet new findings discussed at a research symposium on stuttering, held in Washington on Sunday, Feb. 20, during the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, suggest educators are just beginning to understand the interconnected causes of the condition.
Anne Smith, the director of Purdue University’s Speech Neurophysiology Lab, in West Lafayette, Ind., said researchers no longer think the root of stuttering lies in any one problem.
“The causal factors are many: linguistic factors, cognitive factors, psychosocial factors, and genetic factors,” she said during the symposium. “It’s emergent; there are a number of underlying factors, and it’s the way they interact that produces stuttering.”
Mismatch in the Brain
It’s common for a stutterer’s speech to become more unstable as sentences become more complex. In a study published in the journal NeuroImage in November, Luc F. de Nil, a professor of speech-language pathology at the University of Toronto, found that when someone stutters, even purposely, it overactivates and mistimes parts of the cerebellum associated with integrating sense perception with body movements, which may contribute to a mismatch between thinking a phrase and speaking it.All children learn to speak a bit like the way they learn to ride a bike, wobbly at first and becoming smoother with practice. According to a series of 2010 studies co-written by Ms. Smith—part of 20 years of ongoing research on adult and child stutterers underwritten by the National Institutes of Health—about 60 percent of preschool children had normal variations in their ability to clap in time with a rhythm and in both their jaw movements and sounds when they repeated a sentence like “Buy Bobby a puppy” 10 times.
Speech consistency doesn’t come until puberty, yet even when speaking clearly, young children and adults who stutter vary more widely in clapping, voice, and mouth and jaw movement than do nonstutterers.
“Stuttering isn’t just these behaviors you see,” Ms. Smith said. “It’s a symptom in young children of a profound difference in the way the brain is developing.”
That difference may in part be genetic, suggests research by Dennis T. Drayna, a section chief for the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, in Bethesda, Md.
Building on prior studies of identical twins, Mr. Drayna’s team found in studies last year of families that stuttering is heritable.
At least three different genes have been associated with increased stuttering. Mr. Drayna is now experimenting with mice that have been injected with one of the faulty genes to determine if they have changes in their own vocalizations that could help pinpoint the cause.
Outgrowing the Disorder
Ms. Smith said half of those she studies who stutter at the start of school will have stopped within a few years. Her team has identified 72 4- and 5-year-olds who stutter, along with 45 peers who do not, and will run each through a two-day battery of language tests once a year for five years to track differences between children who continue to stutter and those who become fluent on their own or with speech therapy.
Braden Barber, 17, is among the 1 percent whose stuttering has persisted. Diagnosed at age 2, he went through several different speech pathologists in elementary and middle school, but said he stopped seeing the last one about a year ago and hasn’t used many of the anti-stuttering strategies, “because most of them don’t really work for me.”“I’m not really looking for a cure for stuttering,” he said. “I try to control it as much as I can. …. I try to talk very slowly so I can keep up with my words and know what I’m going to say.”
In the process, Mr. Barber, now a junior at The Colony High School in The Colony, Texas, said he’s stopped following research on stuttering and started just getting more involved in the community. He has joined the Dallas-area Teens Who Stutter group, and developed an informational letter for students who stutter to give to their teachers, describing the disorder and ways the teacher can support the student in class by encouraging him or her to speak without applying pressure without notice.
His advice echoes that of many researchers and advocates for stuttering students.
“The biggest mistake is telling the child just slow down, take your time, and you’ll get it out,” said Tommie L. Robinson Jr., the director of the Scottish Rite Center for Childhood Language Disorders in the Children’s Hearing and Speech Center at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington. He is the immediate past-president of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
“If teachers model fluid, easy talking, that’s far more powerful,” Mr. Robinson said. “If they talk to their entire class in a slow, easy, unrushed way, it’s good for the entire class.”
Keith Adams, the principal at West Mesquite High School in Texas and a stutterer since early childhood, said he makes a point of reaching out to students who stutter, both through the Mesquite school district support group and individually.
“I think more people stutter than one might assume, but with speech therapy as available as it is now, kids are able to get access to services that just weren’t available,” Mr. Adams said, when he was a child. “What we want to try to do with the district support is to show kids it’s OK to be a stutterer. … It’s something you have to manage, but it’s part of you.”
Vol. 30, Issue 22
Ms. Dodgen, who runs the Mesquite Independent School District’s chapter of the National Stuttering Association’s children’s-support group, said she and other advocates hope the film will bring awareness to stuttering the way “Rain Man” did to autism. The movie has already drawn broad interest in the disorder, which affects about 5 percent of preschoolers at some point in their language development and leaves 1 percent, or more than 3 million Americans, permanently struggling to speak.
Yet new findings discussed at a research symposium on stuttering, held in Washington on Sunday, Feb. 20, during the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, suggest educators are just beginning to understand the interconnected causes of the condition.
Anne Smith, the director of Purdue University’s Speech Neurophysiology Lab, in West Lafayette, Ind., said researchers no longer think the root of stuttering lies in any one problem.
“The causal factors are many: linguistic factors, cognitive factors, psychosocial factors, and genetic factors,” she said during the symposium. “It’s emergent; there are a number of underlying factors, and it’s the way they interact that produces stuttering.”
Mismatch in the Brain
It’s common for a stutterer’s speech to become more unstable as sentences become more complex. In a study published in the journal NeuroImage in November, Luc F. de Nil, a professor of speech-language pathology at the University of Toronto, found that when someone stutters, even purposely, it overactivates and mistimes parts of the cerebellum associated with integrating sense perception with body movements, which may contribute to a mismatch between thinking a phrase and speaking it.All children learn to speak a bit like the way they learn to ride a bike, wobbly at first and becoming smoother with practice. According to a series of 2010 studies co-written by Ms. Smith—part of 20 years of ongoing research on adult and child stutterers underwritten by the National Institutes of Health—about 60 percent of preschool children had normal variations in their ability to clap in time with a rhythm and in both their jaw movements and sounds when they repeated a sentence like “Buy Bobby a puppy” 10 times.
Speech consistency doesn’t come until puberty, yet even when speaking clearly, young children and adults who stutter vary more widely in clapping, voice, and mouth and jaw movement than do nonstutterers.
“Stuttering isn’t just these behaviors you see,” Ms. Smith said. “It’s a symptom in young children of a profound difference in the way the brain is developing.”
That difference may in part be genetic, suggests research by Dennis T. Drayna, a section chief for the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, in Bethesda, Md.
Building on prior studies of identical twins, Mr. Drayna’s team found in studies last year of families that stuttering is heritable.
At least three different genes have been associated with increased stuttering. Mr. Drayna is now experimenting with mice that have been injected with one of the faulty genes to determine if they have changes in their own vocalizations that could help pinpoint the cause.
Outgrowing the Disorder
Ms. Smith said half of those she studies who stutter at the start of school will have stopped within a few years. Her team has identified 72 4- and 5-year-olds who stutter, along with 45 peers who do not, and will run each through a two-day battery of language tests once a year for five years to track differences between children who continue to stutter and those who become fluent on their own or with speech therapy.
Braden Barber, 17, is among the 1 percent whose stuttering has persisted. Diagnosed at age 2, he went through several different speech pathologists in elementary and middle school, but said he stopped seeing the last one about a year ago and hasn’t used many of the anti-stuttering strategies, “because most of them don’t really work for me.”“I’m not really looking for a cure for stuttering,” he said. “I try to control it as much as I can. …. I try to talk very slowly so I can keep up with my words and know what I’m going to say.”
In the process, Mr. Barber, now a junior at The Colony High School in The Colony, Texas, said he’s stopped following research on stuttering and started just getting more involved in the community. He has joined the Dallas-area Teens Who Stutter group, and developed an informational letter for students who stutter to give to their teachers, describing the disorder and ways the teacher can support the student in class by encouraging him or her to speak without applying pressure without notice.
His advice echoes that of many researchers and advocates for stuttering students.
“The biggest mistake is telling the child just slow down, take your time, and you’ll get it out,” said Tommie L. Robinson Jr., the director of the Scottish Rite Center for Childhood Language Disorders in the Children’s Hearing and Speech Center at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington. He is the immediate past-president of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
“If teachers model fluid, easy talking, that’s far more powerful,” Mr. Robinson said. “If they talk to their entire class in a slow, easy, unrushed way, it’s good for the entire class.”
Keith Adams, the principal at West Mesquite High School in Texas and a stutterer since early childhood, said he makes a point of reaching out to students who stutter, both through the Mesquite school district support group and individually.
“I think more people stutter than one might assume, but with speech therapy as available as it is now, kids are able to get access to services that just weren’t available,” Mr. Adams said, when he was a child. “What we want to try to do with the district support is to show kids it’s OK to be a stutterer. … It’s something you have to manage, but it’s part of you.”
Vol. 30, Issue 22
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
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