A Guide for Beginning Teachers

Specific learning disorders

PhDr. Mgr. et Mgr. Ivana Márová, Ph.D.

Dana already knows how to manage challenging situations and keep a good atmosphere in a class. Yet pupils can have difficulties learning, too, as is the case with Lucy. Since the first grade, she has been having a difficult time reading. She has found ways to handle it with time, but she reads slower and has a harder time finding information in a text. She makes it easier by deducing information. It works well for her in certain subjects, but she is failing in Czech language. She faces significant problems in foreign languages, too.

Lucy, like many other pupils, has a specific learning disorder. Developmental difficulties that complicate mainly reading, writing and counting skills as well as the learning of grammar. It is necessary to work with these pupils since the beginning of compulsory education.

Assignment for students:
Think about how much you know about specific learning disorders. What types of specific learning disorders do you know? How could they manifest (in your subjects) at school?

A couple of basic facts on specific learning disorders (SLD):

  • In the Czech Republic, we classify dyslexia (reading disorder), dysgraphia (writing disorder), dysorthography (applying grammar skills disorder), dyscalculia (maths skills disorder), dyspraxia (coordination disorder), dyspinxia (drawing skills disorder) and dysmusia (music skills disorder).
  • In practice, we can encounter dyslexia, dysgraphia, dysorthography and dyscalculia most often.
  • These disorders can occur separately or in tandem. They can have light, intermediate or intense manifestations.
  • Specific learning disorders are the most common special educational needs among Czech pupils (Hrkal, 2019). Therefore, you will probably meet such a pupil in almost every class during your practice.

While at the first level of an elementary school, the special needs educator makes an effort to provide the pupil with strategies to overcome the typical mistakes they make; at the second level, compensation is more crucial. A teacher's job is to find suitable strategies to help a pupil overcome her/his difficulties. These can include various procedures and aids that a pupil can use during a class where his SLD manifest the most.

How to deal with a problem?

How to deal with a problem?
Source: Bluestone, B. 2011. Freeze Public Wages. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/opinion/freeze-public-wages.html


What are the appropriate measures when working with children with SLD at school?
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Dyslexia
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Dysgraphia
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Dysorthography
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Dyscalculia
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Important
1. Specific learning disorders can appear at the second level! It often happens to brilliant pupils or pupils who have another skill that helps them mask their difficulties. The parallel presence of SLD and talent is called twofold-exceptionality. 

2. Pupils with specific learning disorders show unequal performance development. In practice it means that we can meet a pupil who completely fails in maths (dyscalculia), but at the same time, s/he is the best in class in foreign languages. Or we can find a pupil who has strong dyslexia but is the best in maths in a given class.

Associated difficulties of pupils with SLD

Pupils with specific learning disorders can also face other kinds of difficulties that make their learning harder. It is, therefore, crucial to consider it and work on eliminating these problems, e.g., with the school psychologist, school special needs educator or other experts: 

  • Attention deficit; 
  • Weakened motor skills;
  • Weakened visual and hearing perception, spatial and right-left orientation; 
  • Difficulties with social communication – pupils with SLD can have problems building and keeping friendships, communicating with classmates and teachers;
  • Emotional instability – fear of attending school, anxiety;
  • Behavioural problems due to long-term lack of success – truancy;
  • Difficulties with communication skills– poorer vocabulary, difficulties remembering new, more complex words (e.g., terminology or a foreign language);
  • Impetuosity and forgetfulness – often unintentional.

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