ACCESS Rochester
Teaching Students With Learning Disabilities
A learning disability is any of a diverse group of conditions that cause significant difficulties in perceiving and/or processing either auditory, visual and/or spatial information. Of presumed neurological origin, it covers disorders that impair such functions as reading (dyslexia), writing (dysgraphia), and mathematical calculation (dyscalcula).
A learning disability may exist in the presence of a wide range of adequate to superior intelligence and it is often undiagnosed, or misdiagnosed. It is frequently misunderstood by people with learning disabilities themselves, as well as others, as an intellectual deficiency, which emphatically it is not.
A marked discrepancy between intellectual capacity and achievement is what characterizes a learning disability. Documentation of the disability is required not only to establish the existence of a disability, but also to determine the accommodations that are indicated. Students who are believed to have a learning disability that has not previously been reliably diagnosed should be referred to the Local Coordinator or the URDC for consultation.
While a learning disability can not be "cured", it can be circumvented through structural intervention and compensatory strategies. In general, a variety of instructional modes can enhance learning for students with learning disabilities by allowing them to master material that may be inaccessible in one particular form. Drawing upon the student's own experience offers invaluable clues to the types of adaptation that work.
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