Assessment And Identification Of Students With Academic Deficit

Students with Academic Deficit: Its implications to Learning and Teaching Strategies

Goal • To empower St. Joseph’s College Faculty to inspire students with academic deficits to see themselves as resilient beings who have personal strengths and weaknesses.

Objectives: • To identify the different learning functions of the brain (e.g. attention,memory, language, visualspatial abilities, sequencing) and to explain how these affect a student’s performance in school. • To enumerate ways by which deficits in these functions can be addressed.

Introduction • Achievement and prestige are basic human needs. School is the likeliest place to experience these, yet students with academic deficits learn the opposite of these in the most cruel ways, in the very place where they should learn about SUCCESS.

What is academic deficit? • This term is used to cover a wide range of learning difficulties that may or may not result in discrepancies between intelligence and achievement. • Learning disorder not is not a disease. It represents variations in brain function that affects a student performance in school.

• There are many types of learning disorders. Students with these problems need to understand themselves and to be understood by significant adults such as parents and teachers.

General Characteristics • Intelligence- average or near average intelligence • Perception & Motor Skills Muscle coordination problems -Poor auditory/visual discrimination - Awkward, clumsy and uncoordinated

* Memory Difficulties Problems in attention, memory, metacognition, organization, categorizing, arranging and planning. * Difficulty in solving problems and generating ideas * Visual Perceptual difficulties (the brain has difficulty in figuring out information coming from the senses. - Confusion in directional orientation

• Behavior & Affective Characteristics - May be hyperactive or hypoactive - Easily distracted, have short attention span, show memory deficits, act impulsively, overeact with intense or surprising emotions. - Have serious difficulties in social adjustment - Unable to predict the consequences of their behavior and lack social comprehension skills - Provoke negative reactions from others - inability to interact effectively with others frequently in low-self-esteem

Academic learning • Dyslexia a symbolic disorder where there is poor ability to learn to interpret symbols. • Dysgraphia-a difficulty in automatically remembering and mastering the sequence of muscle motor movement and can be observed in their written works. • Dyscalculia a learning disability wherein a student has difficulty in performing math calculations; difficulty in math processes. • Language Disorders (difficulties in the ability to understand and use language.

Causes of Academic Deficits • Attention (also known as concentration) * born that way (i.e. inherited) * a weakness in the brainstem (regulates sleeping and waking) * a frontal lobe problem • Memory (process which we retain information) * difficulty reconstructing information * not enough depth of processing

* Does not understand or can’t handle the way information comes in (visually, in language, in a sequence) * Choosing the wrong information to store 1.Environmental/Ecological Model- poor learning environments. Inappropriate school instruction, lack of motivation, ingestion of lead and drug addiction

• Brain Damage Model- sustained brain damage, impairment of th CNS, minimal brain dysfunction, complication surrounding pregnancy, maternal illness. • Organic and biological Model-chemical found in specific food coloring or flavoring, vitamin deficiencies, imbalances in the neurotransmitter • Genetic Model-inherited influence

General Academic Strategies for Academic Deficit Students • Accommodation -Allow a long period of time for the

student who processes information more slowly to complete his work assignment • Give the student an extra credit assignment to bring up a poor grade • Task-Analysis- Provide for a short incremental steps. The period of exposure should be adequate to provide for even learning in the learning sequence.

• Emphasize the main principles of the subject matter. • Materials should utilize more than one receptor system. • Don’t assume that the student has prior knowledge about the subject matter you are introducing; question him

• Let him know what you expect from him. standards and expectations are just as important for the student with learning problems. • Structure academic tasks to meet the student’s current level of functioning. • Use a content area contract approach to assist the student with learning problems accomplish shortrange goal

• Peer Mediated Instruction - Assign a peer tutor to the student to: make certain that student understand directions, read important materials, drill orally, summarize orally, and make suggestions for improvement in work samples. • Provide extra practice through extra assignments from workbook or work sheets covering specific process.

• Social Skills Training- Reinforce correct responses via social means. • Devise a variety of approaches for teaching the same concept. This approach reinforces new learning and encourages the student to apply the concept in different situations. Computer Assisted Instruction-use of computer software for instruction, tutorial sessions.

• Inclusion strategies- services delivery model for inclusion, a highly structured prescriptive learning with build-in diagnostic procedures. • Cognitive Instruction-emphasis on attending, responding, rehearsal, recall and transfer of information • Study skills training -metacognition skills training such as learning how to take notes and test.

• Providing structure and setting limits- guided learning; use of reinforcements; consistent and firm limits. • Direct instructions- specific target learning are identified, provides a highly structured and organized teaching strategy • Multisensory approach –highlight learning by seeing, hearing,touching and movement; repetition of tasks, employing many learning modalities.

• Walk to the student’s seat as frequently as possible to assist and reassure him. • Help the student develop strategies for organizing time and materials. • Relate concepts you are discussing to concrete experiences or other concepts taught earlier. • Present new tasks or concepts in an uncomplicated manner with as few unknown as possible.