When you walk through the average school you will generally find one of three things happening in the classrooms: silence, working volume, bedlam. Regardless of the difference, one kid will sit silently in the corner and one kid will be bouncing in his chair, another will be completely focused on his pencil shavings and lead collection, another will be sitting quietly “attending “ to the task in front of him but not printing a thing or just going through the motions. Which kid is learning disabled, which kid is gifted? Good question. Some of us may never find out if we don't take the time to care. This is a typical classroom anywhere in Ontario.
The learning disabled child is hard to identify. He appears off task or has attentional issues. So just be patient and he will finally figure things out, right? Or put him on the computer and let him play math games. He will get the concept , right? No, he will develop some skills to finally arrive at the correct answer, it is likely that he has arrived at the answer by trial and error. He has been on the program so long that he has figures it out or a buddy has helpfully pointed out the answer.
This child is a whiz at simple addition and subtraction and arrives at the answers as quickly as the gifted kids, ask him to tell you how he got there and he has difficulty communicating this. To solve word problems you highlight the part of the sentence you wish for him to copy to start to answer the question and the letters are flipped and turned. Now, are you beginning to see that this student is experiencing difficulty in math. As long as you were doing simple computation worksheets he did well. This is just one of the scenarios of the LD child in the classroom. Slipping under the teacher's radar. His parents say he is just immature and a “typical boy”. In the meantime, we just put a band-aid on the problem - frustrated with him.
Something must be done.
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