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Twice Exceptional Learners. Gifted LD Students teachers mistakenly view a bright child with learning problems as lazy, unmotivated, and undisciplined---increasing their frustration and lowering their self-esteem. What you need to know.
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Twice Exceptional Learners Gifted LD Students teachers mistakenly view a bright child with learning problems as lazy, unmotivated, and undisciplined---increasing their frustration and lowering their self-esteem.
What you need to know • School failure does not always reflect the child's true ability. • Educators must understand that children with high potential can simultaneously struggle with academic tasks at school. • Twice exceptional students are often not identified because the giftedness and disability mask each other. • If they are identified, many times it is for only 1 exceptionality.
What these students look like • high verbal or visual-motor aptitude • possible creativity • boredom with grade level or below grade level reading/math • variable scores on achievement tests in reading/math sections • improved performance with compensation strategies • low tolerance or frustration with rote-drill tasks • possible inattention • unrealistically high or low self-concept
The Facts • Many academically talented students with learning disabilities are identified later in school, either in middle or high school. • The situation is complicated, as the abilities of gifted students often mask their disabilities, and, in turn, their disabilities can disguise their giftedness. • Due to this contradiction between high levels of ability and critical problems with learning, students who are academically talented but also have learning disabilities are at risk of under identification.
What can we do? • They may be excluded or underrepresented in both programs for students with learning disabilities and in programs for gifted and talented students. • More flexible identification and assessment will enable more twice-exceptional children to be both appropriately identified and served. • There is a need to switch from programming aimed at remediation to a focus on adaptation or "getting around" the deficits. He recommended that we teach strategies to bypass the learning problems, and we should provide the tools necessary for students to learn in spite of their difficulties.
Diagnosis • The use of many instruments, including intelligence tests administered by qualified professionals, achievement and personality tests, as well as parent and teacher rating scales, can help the professional determine the subtle differences between ADHD/LD and giftedness. • Individual evaluation allows the professional to establish maximum rapport with the child to get the best effort on the tests. Since the test situation is constant, it is possible to make better comparisons among children. • Portions of the intellectual and achievement tests will reveal attention problems or learning disabilities, whereas personality tests are designed to show whether emotional problems (e.g., depression or anxiety) could be causing the problem behaviors. • Evaluation should be followed by appropriate curricular and instructional modifications that account for advanced knowledge, diverse learning styles, and various types of intelligence.
Stories from Gifted/LD learners • Twenty-one gifted/LD middle school boys were interviewed to learn how they handled difficult school situations. • The boys, in grades 6-9, had all been identified as learning disabled by the North Carolina exceptional children's guidelines. • They each had at least one measured IQ score of 125 or higher on the WISC-R indicating their giftedness.
Four areas of difficulty were found • Failing a test you thought you would pass • Report cards that are not "up to par" and difficulties with organizing to do better • Problems with spelling and remembering facts and details • Difficulty with reading speed.
Failing a Test • "Well, I studied for a test and got in there and it was not the exact same thing I studied ... and some of the problems I didn't understand. I got really mad, because I thought I'd studied all of it a long time and sort of rushed through, so I could get through. I did not do too well" • How the teacher could help-extended time, extra credit, taking small breaks, and being allowed to take the test in a room where it was quiet. • Others indicated that study guides and reviews were helpful.
Report cards and Organization • The student felt like he was trying. He studied, but then had difficulty on the tests. He did his homework but often lost it, and sometimes he forgot what his assignments were. His papers were often torn or raggedy, and his teachers commented that his work was sloppy and disorganized. • Helpful strategies- assignment pads with teacher sign-offs, some kind of organization strategy for books, post-it note reminders, and a specific study place at home with parental supervision.
Spelling and Remembering Facts • Social studies was not A's best subject. He had a hard time with the tests. Mostly it was remembering facts and dates. Even on the essay tests it seemed like he always ran out of time and couldn't get all the information straight. Part of his difficulty was with spelling. “A” was getting ready for a social studies test and felt like it was going to be really hard. He already felt discouraged. • On the last test, the teacher had taken off 15 points for spelling errors, and commented that she could not read some of the answers. Now he had to do better to get a good grade. • The strategies mentioned included asking teachers not to take points off for spelling, using alternative words that were easier to spell, oral tests, carrying a Franklin Speller, using a spell checker on the computer, and getting parents to check the work.
Reading Dilemma • English was not his best subject. He had a hard time with all the reading. When they would have to read in class, it seemed like everyone finished before he did. He hated being the slowest one, and usually could not participate in the class discussion, which he liked, because he had not finished the reading. • He knew that he understood what he read but hated being the last one finished. • There always seemed to be more reading than he could do in the time allowed. • Helpful strategies- skimming, skipping, saving it for homework, getting parents to help with the reading, copying the text so they can highlight and listening to the discussion to get the information.
When Giftedness looks like ADHD • Gifted children typically do not exhibit problems in all situations. • For example, they may be seen as ADHD-like by one classroom teacher, but not by another; or they may be seen as ADHD at school, but not by the scout leader or music teacher. • Close examination of the troublesome situation generally reveals other factors which are prompting the problem behaviors.
Gifted or ADHD? • In the classroom, a gifted child's perceived inability to stay on task is likely to be related to boredom, curriculum, mismatched learning style, or other environmental factors. • Gifted children may spend from one-fourth to one-half of their regular classroom time waiting for others to catch up -- even more if they are in a heterogeneously grouped class. • Such children often respond to non-challenging or slow-moving classroom situations by "off-task" behavior, disruptions, or other attempts at self-amusement. • This use of extra time is often the cause of the referral for an ADHD evaluation.
ADHD • By contrast, children with ADHD typically exhibit the problem behaviors in virtually all settings including at home and at school. • The extent of their problem behaviors may fluctuate significantly from setting to setting depending largely on the structure of that situation.
Reflection • As a team we came into this presentation with different personal experiences. We all had different takes on the twice exceptional child. While we worked together as a team, we learned from each other’s perspectives and the research that we explored. Our main belief is that each child needs to be looked at individually for their own strengths and weaknesses. These twice exceptional students should never be allowed to fall through the cracks of the system.
