Is A Learning Disability Special Needs

Answers To The Question How Much Do Special Needs Schools Cost From School Officials

Simon Williams, co-executive director of , a in Calgary, AlbertaSpecial education schools vary in the amount of specialized supports and resources that they provide, and therefore the costs vary too. Small class sizes, educational assistants in every classroom, and access to on-site psychologists naturally mean the tuition needs to be higher than regular private school programs.

Currently at Foothills Academy, our tuition is $15,300 per year. This fee is all-inclusive, with no extra charges for busing, field trips, technology, etc. Foothills Academy is a unique private school program that is also dedicated to not turning any family away due to financial circumstances. Currently, about 40% of our students attend with some amount of bursary assistance. This is achieved by a comprehensive fundraising program consisting of endowment funds, corporate and organizational donations, and annual fundraising efforts of school families and staff. All money raised supports our bursary fund, so that no family is turned away due to financial circumstances.

Financial aid is available through tax deductions and/or government rebates. A student must have a psychological assessment completed first to be considered for a disability tax credit, a child disability benefit, and/or a registered disability savings plan. Speak with your childs pediatrician or doctor if you suspect your child has a learning exceptionality.

Support For Learning Disabilities And Family Carers

Some learning disabilities are diagnosed at birth, such as Down’s syndrome. Others might not be discovered until the child is old enough to talk or walk.

Once your child is diagnosed with a learning disability, your GP can refer you for any specialist support you may need.

You’ll begin to get to know the team of professionals who will be involved in your or your child’s care.

The right support from professionals such as GPs, paediatricians , speech and language therapists, physiotherapists, educational and clinical psychologists and social care helps people with a learning disability live as full and independent a life as possible.

Learning Disabilities Affect Everyone

Learning disabilities are the most prevalent handicapping condition covered under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the federal law that guides special education. About 2.3 million children out of a total 6.5 million in special education have a learning disability. Learning disabilities do not discriminate they impact children of all ethnicities and income levels. They can run in families. They are not generally treatable via medicine. Those with learning disabilities have average to above average intelligence, yet 20 percent of students with a learning disability drop out of school. You do not grow out of a learning disability. These childrens books explain how people learn differently, highlighting dyslexia and other learning differences.

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Important Point To Note

Knowing that a child has a learning disability tells you only that the child is experiencing some difficulty processing information. You must learn much more about the child before you can determine how much difficulty, the type of difficulties, and/or the impact the disability has on specific academic subjects or tasks.

What To Do If Your Child Is Diagnosed With Dysgraphia

• Find a Specialist

  Students with dysgraphia need ongoing, explicit instruction in handwriting, spelling, and composition, but many schools do not offer these services. Look for professionals with full certification and continued professional development related to dysgraphia. Students with dysgraphia respond well to multisensory approaches that use auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile senses, such as the Wilson Reading System®.

• Request Classroom Accommodations

  Talk with your childs teachers about making small changes in the classroom to help your child succeed. For example, ask the teacher to:

• Allow your child to use pencil grips and other writing aids
• Let your child use a keyboard, tablet, or other technology as a substitute for written expression so they can focus on the ideas rather than the mechanics of writing

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Types Of Specific Learning Disabilities

Specific learning disability is an umbrella term that can describe many different types of learning issues. An educational evaluation may show that your child has a specific learning disability in a certain subject area.

For example:

• A specific learning disability in reading, also known as dyslexia
• A specific learning disability in writing, also known as dysgraphia
• A specific learning disability in mathematics, also known as dyscalculia

Free And Appropriate Public Education

The laws mentioned above provide students with disabilities access to educational services that allow them to enjoy the same rights as students without disabilities, setting forth a framework describing that instruction should be provided in a regular classroom, a classroom specially modified to meet the special needs of students, or under special conditions . It is also important to note that public schools are obligated to provide special educational conditions at no additional cost.

In order to meet specific student needs an Individualized Educational Plan is created for each child with learning disabilities. This way, the school designs an educational plan they need to implement based on the identified disability. The IEP is designed by a team comprising teachers, specialists and family. The role of parents is crucial in this process, because they know their child best, and can provide a lot of valuable information.

The goal is to provide the child with the necessary support so that they can advance and get a quality education. Thanks to the IEP program, many special-needs students achieve results on par with the results of regular students.

The importance of special education lies in the fact that it helps children with special needs to exercise different rights that used to be inaccessible:

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Instructional Strategies To Help Students Compensate For Receptive Language Disabilities

Characteristics

Students with a receptive language disability may have difficulty processing information presented orally. Despite normal hearing, the student may have problems with the following: differentiating between similar sounds, following oral directions, interpreting and evaluating oral presentations, concentrating, handling distractions, and taking notes.

Strategies

Learning Disabilities/specific Learning Disorders

A learning disorder, evident in both academic situations and social perception/interaction. Learning disabilities may also cause difficulties with organizational skills. LD involves one or more of the processes necessary for the proper use of spoken language or the symbols of communication, and is characterized by a condition that:

a)Is not primarily the result of: impairment of vision primary emotional disturbance cultural difference.

b)Results in a significant discrepancy between academic achievement and assessed intellectual ability with deficits in one or more of the following: receptive language language processing expressive language mathematical computations and

c) May be associated with one or more conditions diagnosed as: a perceptual handicap

A formal exceptionality, identified by an Identification Placement and Review Committee , in the category of Communication. Learning Disabilities are also a diagnosed psychological condition.

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Special Needs And Learning Disability Specialist

Learning disabilities are classified as disorders in which a person has difficulty learning in a typical manner. Some students, for unknown reasons, have difficulty receiving and processing information. This can make it problematic for students to learn in a traditional classroom environment. Learning disabilities are not indicative of intelligence level. In our experience, we have found that students often do not get the specific learning tools needed to help them succeed with their unique learning styles. Learning disabilities cannot be cured or fixed however, with the right support and intervention, people with learning disabilities can succeed in school and be successful in life.

We have worked for over 40 years with children diagnosed with a long list of Learning Disabilities. Learning disabilities are so specialized , we recommend the first session at Education Therapy be used for diagnostic testing by one of our learning specialists.

If you have any questions or would like to learn more about our services,please call our office at 1-808-893-0590 or visit the contact us page for alternative way to reach us.

Click the Adobe PDF icon below to download a PDF file of information in regard to our Special Needs and Learning Disabilities Specialists program. The PDF is largely text-only and will be printer friendly.

Reasons To Say Disability Instead Of Special Needs

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What Is A Specific Learning Disability

A specific learning disability is a disorder that interferes with a students ability to listen, think, speak, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations.1 Students with a specific learning disability may struggle with reading, writing, or math.2

The term specific learning disability is commonly used in federal and state law, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , and by many private and public schools.3

• 63%Of people know someone who has a learning disability5
• 43%Of people wrongly think that learning disabilities are correlated with IQ5
• 10-15%Of school-aged children have a learning disability4

What Can Cause A Learning Disability

A learning disability occurs when the brain is still developing . Several things can cause a learning disability.

Before birth things can happen to the central nervous system that can cause a learning disability. A child can be born with a learning disability if the mother has an accident or illness while she is pregnant, or if the unborn baby develops certain genes.

Genes are chemicals in our bodies that contain information about us, like how we look.

A person can be born with a learning disability if he or she does not get enough oxygen during childbirth, has trauma to the head, or is born too early.

After birth, a learning disability can be caused by early childhood illnesses, accidents and seizures.

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Learning Disabilities: Our Definition

A learning disability is a reduced intellectual ability and difficulty with everyday activities for example household tasks, socialising or managing money which affects someone for their whole life.

People with a learning disability tend to take longer to learn and may need support to develop new skills, understand complicated information and interact with other people.

What Is A Learning Disability Exactly

The learning disability is defined as any mental condition that prevents a person from acquiring the same amount of knowledge as others in their age group.

Do you want to learn more about the different types of learning disabilities? Keep reading to find out the 5 most common learning disabilities special education and their symptoms.

Video: Common Learning Disabilities

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Using The Correct Words

Whenever we label a person, we take away his or her humanity. To say that someone is âa crippleâ or âan autisticâ objectifies him or her. The most important thing to remember is always to speak of the person first. Therefore it would be, âthe student with autism,â rather than âthe autistic student.â Being politically correct is a call to see the person, first and foremost.

Equally important is to beware of using terms like â disadvantaged, challenged, handicapped or defective. Students with disabilities are no more disadvantaged than others, unless treated that way. Describing students as challenged or differently-abled has become euphemisms it is best not to use them. Use the term handicapped only to illustrate how something restricts a studentâs ability to do something, as in, My student was handicapped by the inability to enter the theater due to lack of an accessible entry. To state that a student as having a defect or is defective is simply not acceptable. In addition, avoid terms such as âconfined to a wheelchairâ or âdisabled toilet or parking space.â Instead, use the terms, the student in a wheelchair or the student who uses a wheelchair, the accessible toilet or accessible parking space.

The following is a list of preferred, politically correct terms for students with disabilities:

• visually impaired
• blind
• deaf
• hard of hearing
• a student with Down Syndrome
• a student with cerebral palsy

The Impact Learning Disabilities Have On Academic Performance

No two individuals with a learning disability are alike. Adults with learning disabilities require careful clinical assessment to determine the specific nature of their disability and appropriate accommodation strategies. The following list gives examples of the impact that various learning disabilities have on academic performance.

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Hope For Learning Disabilities: The Brain Can Change

Science has made great strides in understanding the inner workings of the brain, and one important discovery that brings new hope for learning disabilities and disorders is called neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity refers to the brains natural, lifelong ability to change.

Throughout life, the brain is able to form new connections and generate new brain cells in response to experience and learning. This knowledge has led to groundbreaking new treatments for learning disabilities that take advantage of the brains ability to change. Innovative programs, such as the Arrowsmith program, use strategic brain exercises to identify and strengthen weak cognitive areas. For example, for children who have difficulty distinguishing between different sounds in a word, there are new computer-based learning programs that slow down the sounds so that children can understand them and gradually increase their speed of comprehension.

These discoveries about neuroplasticity provide hope to all students with learning disorders, and further research may lead to additional new treatments that target the actual causes of learning disabilities, rather than simply offering coping strategies to compensate for weaknesses.

How does understanding the brain help a learning disorder?

Environments That Support Young People

We carefully structure each element of our students education and care experience to help them manage their learning difficulty and provide a pathway towards independence. This includes:

• Specialist staff trained in SpLD
• Small class sizes for personalised teaching
• Tailored curriculum
• Innovative teaching strategies
• Strong therapeutic provision to help students

Our schools and colleges provide positive learning environments, where priority is given to achieving a strong education and meeting personal development targets.

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Contrast With Other Conditions

People with an IQ lower than 70 are usually characterized as having an intellectual disability and are not included under most definitions of learning disabilities because their difficulty in learning are considered to be related directly to their overall low intelligence.

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder is often studied in connection with learning disabilities, but it is not actually included in the standard definitions of learning disabilities. An individual with ADHD may struggle with learning, but he or she can often learn adequately once successfully treated for the ADHD. A person can have ADHD but not learning disabilities or have learning disabilities without having ADHD. The conditions can co-occur.

People diagnosed with ADHD sometimes have impaired learning. Some of the struggles people with ADHD have might include lack of motivation, high levels of anxiety, and the inability to process information. There are studies that suggest people with ADHD generally have a positive attitude toward academics and, with developed study skills, can perform just as well as individuals without learning disabilities. Also, using alternate sources of gathering information, such as websites, study groups, and learning centers, can help a person with ADHD be academically successful.

Children With Learning Disabilities Can And Do Succeed

It can be tough to face the possibility that your child has a learning disorder. No parent wants to see their child suffer. You may wonder what it could mean for your childs future, or worry about how they will make it through school. Perhaps youre concerned that by calling attention to your childs learning problems they might be labeled slow or assigned to a less challenging class.

But the important thing to remember is that most kids with learning disabilities are just as smart as everyone else. They just need to be taught in ways that are tailored to their unique learning styles. By learning more about learning disabilities in general, and your childs learning difficulties in particular, you can help pave the way for success at school and beyond.

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Positively Impacting Mental Health

A quality and well-designed learning disability education positively impacts the childs psychological development. Regardless of impairments, with the right approach, the child will not be excluded and alienated, but will have a fulfilling social life. A better understanding of their disability by other children will lead to their acceptance as equal members of the community.