Assisting Students with Learning Disabilities in and Beyond School

CEU Course Description

Part 1: If you’re a teacher, the number of occasions in which you’ll have to support a student with a learning disability is increasing--not decreasing. It’s therefore vital to know exactly how to teach and manage your classroom to best support not only students who like to learn differently, but also students who may naturally have a more difficult time with some specific studies or functionalities. As a teacher, you’re an integral part of your student’s educational team. You need to know how to recognize and support your students, no matter how they are abled.

Part 2: Specific learning disability (SLD) is the most common eligibility category through which students receive special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The purpose of this course, developed using information from the Texas Center for Learning Disabilities, is to summarize research on the identification of SLD and make recommendations for practice.  The legal requirements for SLD identification and what constitutes a comprehensive evaluation are included, as well as a discussion of the attributes of SLD according to different conceptual frameworks and research reviews on the reliability and validity of different methods for SLD identification.  

Part 3: Reading is a complex task, requiring several regions of the brain to work together.  This task is made even trickier because the brain is not naturally wired to learn to read. Students with learning disabilities struggle with understanding the relationship between sounds, letters and words, and with comprehending the meaning of words, phrases, and paragraphs.  Research indicates that numerous strategies are effective to help students increase their reading skills and to help teachers work most effectively with LD students.

CEU Course Objectives

Part 1: 

1. Classify and distinguish between the main learning disabilities you may observe in your students, and comprehend the main symptomatic patterns of each.
2. Review the primary ways that you can work to reduce anxiety in students with learning disabilities, as well as ways you can boost their executive function.
3. Correlate the actions of involved parents with improved outcomes for their child, and identify ways in which teachers can support parental involvement.
4. Understand the difficulties that a student with learning disorders may be going through, and learn ways to work with a student’s educational team to ensure that all of the experiences necessary for effective education are present.
5. Brainstorm specific ways to support students in your classroom who have learning disabilities, and add practical daily pointers to your teaching toolkit for the success of everyone in your classroom.
6. Identify how specific learning disabilities impact literacy and mathematical skills, and discuss ways to remediate these deficits.

Part 2:

1. Identify legal requirements for SLD identification including eligibility requirements and revised provisions for identification.
2. Describe the eight criteria that must be included in the comprehensive SLD evaluation process.
3. Discuss the attributes of SLD, evaluate the reliability of identification methods, and summarize recommendations for SLD identification.
4. Analyze the evidence base for implementing frameworks to understand SLDs as well as the identification methods embedded in each framework.
5. Outline the characteristics, validity and reliability of identification methods based on processing strengths and weaknesses.
6. Review exclusionary criteria that must be considered when identifying students with SLD, and how such information can assist in planning for effective interventions.