V.3 #3 A Handout for Parents and Teachers - How Can the Loci Method Improve Memory?
Children with reading disabilities and other learning disabilities often struggle to remember what other children easily remember. This struggle often frustrates, stresses, and confuses them. As such, they often berate themselves mercilessly: “I never remember anything....I don’t know how to remember....I’m the stupidest jerk in the school.” Fortunately, teachers and parents can do a great deal to help children with reading and other learning disabilities strengthen their mem
V.3 #3 Best Practices - The Motivating Classroom: The Importance of Classroom Climate and Tone
These are difficult times for the field of education. In these unstable times it is important to leave our frustration with the state of education and finances at the door when working with our students with learning differences. This is especially so given what we know about how our students misperceive our messages of despair and frustration and often believe that it is something they are doing that makes us unhappy. In these stressful times it is vital that we focus effort
V.3 #3 Counseling/School Psychology - Self-Regulation and Academic Learning
Cognitive-behavioral interventions have been shown to effectively teach students with learning disabilities in mathematics, reading and writing (Lyon, Fletcher, Fuchs, & Chhabra, 2006). An excellent example of a cognitive-behavioral intervention is self-regulated strategy development. Self-regulation can be defined as “self generated thoughts, feelings, and actions for attaining academic goals" (Zimmerman, 1998, p. 73). The study of academic self-regulation emerged out of a d
V.3 #3 Social-Emotional Development - Increasing Socialization in School Settings with Group Therapy
Although many of us experience temporary states of anxiety and loneliness, the close friendships that we have act as a support system during times of distress. For children with Learning Disabilities (LD) feelings of anxiety and loneliness can be a persistent way of life predominantly because of difficulty in establishing and maintaining friendships. Being part of a friendship requires a repertoire of social skills that many children with LD do not understand or possess. The
V.3 #3 Early Childhood - Inspiring Reading for Learning Disabled Children and Their Families: Totto-
There are many books on learning disabilities (LDs), many of which provide important theoretical, practical, and socio-emotional guidance to the educators and parents of LD children, so as to facilitate the developmental processes of these children. One such work of paramount importance has been written by a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and Japanese television personality, Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, in the form of an autobiography entitled, Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window (a
V.3 #3 Literacy - Where is the Information? Teaching Question—Answer Relationships (QARs) to Improve
During my first few years as a third-grade homeroom teacher, I primarily used a basal reading series to “teach” reading to my students. I did this because this was the reading program of choice in that particular school. At the time, I didn’t know enough about literacy to enhance that program by teaching some effective strategies to my struggling learners; nor was I equipped to debate the merits and/or the shortcomings of a basal reading series. I just knew that this self-con
V.3 #3 Mathematics - Working Memory: What Is It and What to Do When It Isn’t Working?
Much of learning mathematics involves memory–whether it is committing things to long term memory for later recall, like addition or multiplication facts, or short term memory when recalling steps to follow when carrying out multidigit calculations or solving a multi-step problem. There is also working memory, which involves the ability to hold information in mind while simultaneously working with that information or doing other calculations. (Geary, Hoard, Nugent, & Byrd-Crav