Assignment task: Respond to the folowing
Classmate 1:
Please provide examples of interventions for specific math, reading, and writing disabilities. Support your recommendations with peer-reviewed journal articles.
A recent study was done to see how to improve outcomes for children with dyscalculia. The study was looking into improving the child's working memory to see if that would improve the child's ability to solve addition word problems. They also had some students learning a technique called sketchnote where they learned to draw out representations of the word problem in order to solve it. The idea behind sketchnote is that children can use whatever kind of representation they want while learning to solve some problems. After the study was concluded, it was found that both improving working memory and learning the techniques with sketchnote improved the outcomes for children with specific math disability, however, when the children went through both trainings, there was a significant improvement over just doing one training (Ziadat, 2022).
For dysgraphia, it is common that the child has a fine motor delay which does not allow them to grip the pencil correctly and therefore they are unable to form the letters correctly. It is also common that they will recognize the letter, believe they are writing the correct letter, but there is a disconnect which makes it so they end up writing the incorrect letter or it is formed incorrectly. Crouch and Jakubecy showed in 2007, that there is a way to improve the child's handwriting by performing drills where the child writes letters or words over and over so they can become accustomed to the way the letters are formed. It is also helpful to have the child participate in exercises which strengthen their fine motor skills so they can then grip the pencil correctly. While these activities do take time to be effective, they do work, and they can be very helpful for the children that have dysgraphia (Crouch &Jakubecy, 2007).
The interventions shown to help children with dyslexia are more complex than those for dyscalculia or dysgraphia. Since dyslexia is a somewhat more complicated issue, many different areas need to be addressed. The intervention should include, "training in letter sounds, phoneme awareness, and linking letters and phonemes through writing and reading from texts at the appropriate level..." (Snowling, 2012). All of these different areas need to be addressed in order to improve the child's ability to read. While this intervention may be more complicated and definitely something that would be a bit longer term, it has been shown to be effective and can often help the child get back at their appropriate reading level for their age (Snowling, 2012).
References:
Crouch, A. L., &Jakubecy, J. J. (2007). Dysgraphia: How It Affects a Student's Performance and What Can Be Done about It. TEACHING Exceptional Children Plus, 3(3).
Snowling, M. J. (2012). Early identification and interventions for dyslexia: A contemporary view. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 13(1), 7-14.
Ziadat, A. H. (2022). Sketchnote and working memory to improve mathematical word problem solving among children with dyscalculia. International Journal of Instruction, 15(1), 509-526.
Classmate 2:
Learning disabilities can have a large affect on students throughout school years. Accoring to Lyons (1996), The longer children go without an identification of LD and a proper intervention, the harder it is for remediation. For children suffering from all learning disabilities, children under the age of nine that are at risk of reading failure typically respond better to intervention. Children with reading disabilities do not respond properly to alphabetical code. It is important to use highly structured programs that strategically teach phonological rules at a slow pace (Lyons, 1996). A broken down systematic approach of proper phonics has been proven to be more effective than a whole language approach.
When looking at math interventions for individuals with learning disabilities, the typical age of identification is third grade as well. Around nine years old (Fuchs, et al., 2008). The article Intensive intervention for students with Mathematics Disabilities: Seven principles of effective practice (2008), introduces two different types of math interventions to aid with number problems and story problems to test their efficiency and the percentage of students who did not respond to the intervention. Using intervention with these specific areas of mathematics typically creates memory based routines. Children with learning disabilities tend to struggle with shifting to memory based answers. According to Fuchs, et al., (2008), a helpful math intervention for children who have identified learning disabilities would be Math Flash. Math flash goes over about 200 different number combinations with repetition and specific scripts for the educator to use. This helps students develop memory based math strategies. Along with the actual math intervention, reinforcement is also inserted in within the program (Fuchs, et al., 2008). It is important to had praise within an intervention to encourage the future probability of the response.
References
Fuchs, L. S., Fuchs, D., Powell, S. R., Seethaler, P. M., Cirino, P. T., & Fletcher, J. M. (2008). Intensive intervention for students with Mathematics Disabilities: Seven principles of effective practice. Learning Disability Quarterly, 31(2), 79-92.