Online Class: Learning Disabilities — What You Need to Know

Empowering Minds: Comprehensive Insights into Learning Disabilities

Welcome to "Learning Disabilities: What You Need to Know," our dedicated course centered on the fascinating and complex world of learning disabilities. In today's diverse educational landscape, understanding learning disabilities is not just a requirement for educators but an essential skill for parents, guardians, peers, and even individuals navigating their own learning challenges.

Throughout the course, participants will be guided through a comprehensive exploration of learning disabilities, spanning their causes, classifications, and diagnostic criteria. While we offer a holistic view, our focus is on actionable knowledge, practical strategies, and fostering empathy.

Key Highlights of the Course:

1. Foundations of Learning Disabilities: Dive deep into understanding the genesis, symptoms, and diverse classifications of learning disabilities, from Dyslexia to Dyscalculia.

2. Modern Diagnostic Processes: Equip yourself with the latest methods and criteria for diagnosing learning disabilities. With an ever-evolving field, staying updated is key.

3. Academic Placement & Accommodations: Delve into the real-world challenges faced by individuals with learning disabilities across educational stages—from pre-K to post-secondary. Discover the array of accommodations that are revolutionizing inclusive learning.

4. Instructional Strategies for Success: Understand the myriad of teaching techniques tailored for diverse learning needs. Whether it's visual aids, experiential learning, or structured note-taking, find out how educators across the globe are making a difference.

5. Emotional & Behavioral Impacts: Recognize the often-overlooked emotional ramifications of learning disabilities, from diminished self-worth to social anxieties. Learn to nurture resilience, confidence, and positivity in affected individuals.

6. Inspiration from Luminaries: Be inspired by renowned figures who, despite their learning challenges, have scaled heights, leaving indelible marks in their fields. Their stories serve as testaments to the spirit of perseverance.

7. Nurturing the Seven Learners: From kinesthetic to auditory learners, we'll break down the unique ways individuals assimilate information and offer tailored strategies to optimize their learning experiences.

8. Building Resilience & Confidence: Equip yourself with a toolkit of methods to bolster self-belief and resilience in those grappling with learning disabilities. By fostering a supportive environment, you can be the catalyst for transformation.

According to recent statistics, as many as 1 in 5 students in the U.S. have a learning disability. With such prevalence, the importance of understanding and catering to these diverse needs becomes paramount. As we conclude, participants will be armed with a plethora of resources, insights, and skills, ensuring they're well-equipped to champion the cause of inclusive education, empathy, and empowerment.

Join us in this course as we journey through the multifaceted world of learning disabilities, unlocking doors to a brighter, inclusive future for all.

Courses Frequently Bought Together:

Autism 101

Attention Deficit Disorders: ADD and ADHD

Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

Course Motivation

Learning disabilities are caused by a number of factors that result in millions of individuals - children and adults – experiencing difficulty in several areas of function within a learning environment. Understanding the characteristics and identification of learning disabilities, and their types and prevalence, helps parents, teachers and those diagnosed with a learning disability to overcome academic and social challenges.

As knowledge equates to power, information regarding the causes of learning disabilities, how they're commonly identified and treated, and how they are assessed and accommodated are important topics for millions. Many people confuse learning disabilities with learning problems, but they're not the same animal.  A learning disability is defined as a noticeable learning difficulty in one or more specific academic areas. Learning disorders are based on clinical diagnoses, wherein an individual has met specific criteria in frequency, intensity, and degree of symptoms and issues.

In today's society, we often lump learning disabilities into one group, but there are actually more than half a dozen causes of learning disabilities that may affect an individual's ability to read or comprehend the written word, to perform mathematical or rational equations, as well as an inability to write correctly or legibly.

Throughout this course, we'll focus on types and prevalence of learning disabilities, causes of learning disabilities, and how parents and teachers can devise instructional strategies to help those with learning disabilities. Practical approaches to instructional strategies will be briefly summarized for multiple age groups.

The most important thing for any individual diagnosed with a learning disability or learning disorder is to realize they are not alone. Some of the greatest and most powerful individuals in the world, from Albert Einstein, to Abraham Lincoln, experienced one or more types of learning disability.

Identification -- Signs of a Learning Disability

Learning disabilities are not always easy to identify. Because of differences in ages, behavior patterns, lifestyles, and upbringing, many children are not diagnosed with a learning disability for months, and even years. Following are common signs and characteristics that parents, teachers and professionals can utilize to narrow down the possibility of a learning disability.

Pre-K

• Slow growth of vocabulary
• Difficulty determining the right word to define an object or idea
• Slowed verbalization
• Difficulty learning the alphabet, colors, shapes, numbers or days of the week
• Difficulty following instructions
• Slowed fine motor skill development
• Often difficult interaction with those of the same age
• Difficulty with pronunciation (this is after determination of no physical factors or deformities that may affect speech, including varying degrees of deafness, cleft palate, etc.)

Kindergarten through Fourth Grade

• Difficulty remembering data or facts (history, spelling, math)
• Difficulty learning new skills (often, such individuals lean on memorizing)
• Consistent reversal or inversion of letters, such as d/b or m/w
• Routinely confuses or has difficulty writing or reading math signs
• Impulsive behavior
• Difficulty with reading analog or digital clocks
• Poor coordination
• Often accident prone

Fifth Grade through Eighth Grade

• Consistently reverses the sequence of letters
• Difficulty grasping the difference between root words, suffixes, and prefixes
• Resists reading out loud
• Difficulty with handwriting, often as a result of an awkward pencil grip
• Resists writing assignments
• Difficulty recalling facts

High school and Adulthood

• Continuous misspelling
• Continued avoidance of writing and reading assignments
• Difficulty rationalizing open ended questions
• Poor memory skills
• Difficulty grasping abstract concepts
• Resists new environments and settings
• Is either über-focused or disregards details

Characteristics

Keeping in mind that, again, learning types and behaviors differ among individuals, it may be eye-opening to view the data regarding learning disabilities among children and adults. 

According to education.com, nearly 3 million school-age children in the United States today have been classified with specific learning disabilities and receive -- or have received -- special educational support. This breaks down to roughly 5 percent of school-age children in public school environments having been diagnosed with a learning disability. Of course, this percentage doesn't include those who are home-schooled, or who attend private or religious-based schools.

Learning disabilities do not focus on specific ethnic or racial groupings, but it does seem that boys are more often diagnosed with a learning disability than girls, at approximately a 3-to-1 ratio. In addition, between the ages of six and nine, the number of students who receive special education increases, while the most common age group (42 percent) are between 10 and 13 years of age. As children enter young adulthood between the ages of 16 and 21, a sharp decrease in research and statistics exists.

The Learning Disabilities Association of America provides information regarding adults with learning disabilities, stating that many girls who experienced a learning disability during their high school years were likely to drop out, many of them as a result of pregnancy (this data suggests that poor grades, low levels of confidence and self-esteem, lead many to simply give up).