June | 2024 | Jade Peartree's Blog

Types of Specific Learning Disorders SPELD PD Tuesday 11th & 18th June 2024

PD Hours 3:45-4;45pm x 2 (2 hours)

Presenter:

Dr Skye McLennan, Clinical Psychologist, Director of Psychology and Clinical Services.

The slides and resources within this post have been created by Dr Skye McLennan, and she has given permission for this content to be shared on my blog.

Session 1: Tuesday 11th June 2024.

Types of Learning Disorders covered in this session:

Dyslexia
Dysgraphia
Dyscalculia

Processing weaknesses are common:

working memory
executive functioning
Processing speed

Commonly co-occur with developmental disorders:

ADHD
ASD
Anxiety

Recommended Podcast:

Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong.

https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/

Reading Intervention for Children

How to Teach Blending:

What about sight words? Visual memory is memorising the sequence of letters to identify sight words. Teaching high frequency words identifying the parts that are not decodable.

The 4 Stage Reading Chain:

Phonological Awareness: Awareness of the sounds (phonemes) within spoken words. (Early childhood, ELC/ Kindy)
Phonics: Decoding, the relationship between individual sounds (phonemes) and the letters that represent them (graphemes). Structured synthetic phonics programs.
Fluency: Repeated reading, model fluency first, they read it, time them and record them. Do it again 4 times in a single session. Improve speed. Improves comprehension. Must read aloud, make the text short and repeat it, individual task.
Comprehension

Reading Comprehension:

Students at risk here are EAL/D students, students with language disorders. Explicitly teaching the vocabulary.
More than 10 words a week is too much. Teaching multiple times over a week is important.

Audio Books help build vocabulary. Vocabulary needs explicit instruction.

Written Expression:

The process of writing is very complex. A child is having to access a variety of strategies and tools to create a text.

If a child is struggling with writing, we need to identify which area or areas they are struggling with. See diagram below.

Handwriting Heroes:

Session 2: Tuesday 18th June 2024.

Maths Intervention:

Consistent approaches and language used within schools is key.

Accommodations & Adjustments for Students with Specific Learning Disorders (SLD’s):

Working around the problem allows the student to access learning tasks. Reasonable adjustments are a legal obligation under the Disability Discrimination Act. Many children who have Specific Learning Disorders (SLDs) also have other mental-processing weaknesses. These need adjustments too.

– Working memory

– Executive functioning

– Attention

Reading Accommodations:

Word: Read aloud function.