Myth or Fact?

1. Myth or Fact? There are several persistent MYTHS about learning disabilities.

2. What are some ideas you might have about how children with learning disabilities process information?

3. Children with Dyslexia see written words in reverse….

4. MYTH • Dyslexics see the same way nondisabled people do, however the way the brain processes information make decoding words and may reverse letters or words when writing. Some may also have trouble confusing left and right.

5. Children with dyslexia can’t learn to read…

6. MYTH • Children with Dyslexia may have a more difficult time learning to read because of the way they process information, but with the proper interventions they can become successful readers.

7. Children with learning disabilities are not intelligent…

8. Myth • Children with learning disabilities have the potential to be highly intelligent, in fact many successful people possess a learning disability, for example Nicolai Tesla, Albert Einstein, William Butler Yeats, Charles Schwab, and many others.

9. Characteristics of Dyslexia • Difficulty in decoding skills • Difficulty with spelling • Lack of organization skills • Problems with finding the right words for oral and written communication. • Illegible handwriting • Inadequate fine motor skills • Erratic eye movement when reading • Confusing vowels or substituting consonants

10. Characteristics of Auditory Processing Disorder • Do not recognize subtle differences between sounds in words • Have trouble with information presented orally • Have trouble with multistep directions • Low academic performance • Difficulty with reading comprehension, spelling, and vocabulary

11. Characteristics of Visual Processing Disorder • Spatial-Relationship Dysfunction • Difficulty with recognizing partial images. • Poor depth perception • Left/Right confusion. Generally avoids crossing midline with hands. • Visual Agnosia • Difficulty Recognizing Objects • Difficulty Recognizing Objects

12. Characteristics of Visual Processing Disorder Continued • Figure Ground Deficit • Difficulty isolating single words on a page • Difficulty scanning for letters or words • Difficulty keeping place while reading • Visual-Sequential Memory Dysfunction • Difficulty with storage and retrieval of information • Difficulty remembering a series of events • Revisualization of visual clues challenging

13. Look at it this way… • The brains of people with learning disabilities/“differences”are simply wired differently, so they think differently. • They have difficulty functioning in mainstream education because mainstream education IS “the box” and these people think “outside the box”.

14. Someone who had a different way of thinking.