Children who exhibit a discrepancy between their performance and potential are said to have a "learning disability". A disorder or impairment in one or several, but not many, basic psychological processes can lead to learning difficulties. Children with learning difficulties usually exhibit vast intra-individual differences in their cognitive profiles. It should also be noted that there are different types of learning disabilities. The term ‘dyslexia’ refers to a specific reading difficulty wherein a child finds it difficult to read despite being intelligent and receiving adequate literacy instruction.

Does your student have a learning disability?

• Does the child perform well on oral tasks?
• Does the child read below his/her grade-level?
• Is the child unable to use decoding principles to decipher new words?
• Does the child make innumerable mistakes on sight-words?
• Does the child spell out words while reading?
• Does the child perform extremely poorly on "surprise" spelling tests, where the word list has not been given to the child beforehand?
• Does the child have difficulties copying from the blackboard?
• Does the child show uneven performance across subject areas?
• Does the child have difficulty in remembering "math facts" (addition, subtraction & multiplication tables)despite adequate instruction & exposure?
• Does the child have problems in handwriting?

Answering YES to the above diagnostic markers suggests that a child may be "at risk" for a learning disability. We recommend that you have the child assessed. You can contact us at prayatna@bgl.vsnl.net.in

Further information is available at:
www.ldonline.org
www.ncld.org

www.prayatna.org