Activities for Children With Learning Disabilities
Children with learning disabilities can have difficulty keeping up with the traditional pacing of classrooms and, at times, can be a distraction for both the teacher and other students. One of the great debates in education today is whether to leave those students in the classroom or to place them in a separate classroom for more individualized learning.
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Organization Games
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According to Do2Learn, one of the main deficiencies for individuals with learning disabilities is organization and recalling stored information from the memory. As a result, you can focus on organization tasks using popular games such as Memory or identification games to pick out the object or objects that do not belong with a group of other objects. You can also instill structure by having the student organize himself, his school supplies and his notes before moving on to the next task.
Learning Styles and Strengths
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Activities that utilize a variety of teaching styles can help individuals with learning disabilities to find their strengths and preferred learning techniques. For example, you could help young children to count using the rhythm and beats from a song that can be played on a CD player. This can also help to teach and develop a sense of oral expression, which can also be a challenge for those with learning disabilities.
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Explore Alternative Information Gathering
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Allow learning disabled students to explore other ways of gathering information than traditional lectures and note-taking. Some students may work well with videos or listening to books on tape. Other students may work better looking for their own information by researching a topic on the computer. This will also help to teach valuable life and research skills by training the student to self-advocate and find his own answers.
Vocabulary Building
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Intersperse a variety of activities throughout the day for vocabulary building. You may want to have a word of the day calendar that builds on words that have relationships with each other. One month could focus on antonyms for word pairings while another month may have a theme of exploring words that are homonyms. You can also use colored flash cards, reading out loud or spelling bees to help encourage the improvement of reading abilities.
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References
Resources
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