An online magazine called Interactive Dad had a very brief article on Learning Disabilities. In the article, entitled “What Parents Should Know About Learning Disabilities,” there are paragraphs on neurological basis of LD and recognizing early signs of problems. The good news is that, unlike some we’ve seen, this article doesn’t push misinformation. Link to the article.
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Archive for November, 2006
The Council for Exceptional Children (CEC), the world’s largest advocacy group for students with disabilities and the gifted, is seeking assistance in developing a set of recommendations for funding of programs. Here’s their plea for help.
We are gearing up for next year’s CEC Federal Outlook for Exceptional Children and we need your help! As you may know, every year CEC produces the Federal Outlook for Exceptional Children as a way to provide members of Congress, their staff and officials at the Department of Education with CEC’s funding recommendations for special and gifted education. To give these facts and figures a human touch, we include stories of children who have benefitted from IDEA and the Javits program for students with gifts and talents…. The deadline for submitting stories is January 15, 2007.
Please ask members of your network to consider submitting a story on how funding from IDEA and the Javits program have benefitted students and/or educators. As Congress continues to drastically under fund special and gifted education, we are hoping stories can highlight the impact of federal funding (or lack there of) on schools across the country.
Stories should be only 250 words and we have included a template online to assist in writing these stories. Click on the link below for additional information:
http://www.cec.sped.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home&CONTENTID=7416&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm
Kansas University has a long history of developing methods for serving students with Learning Disabilities, especially at the secondary level. The overall approach championed by Don Deshler, Jean Schumaker, and their colleagues has come to be knows as the “Strategy Instruction Model” or “SIM” because it is designed to provide high school (and others, too) with an interlocking set of strategies to employ in learning academic content. According to a press release by Julie Tollefson, the KU Center for Research on Learning is testing ways of extending the SIM so that it can be employed with larger groups of students.
The two programs, Fusion Reading and Xtreme Reading, engage students in motivation and goal-setting activities and build on a solid foundation of reading materials geared toward capturing students’ interest.
Fusion Reading, headed by KU-CRL associate director Mike Hock, is a two-year intensive class offered during a student’s freshman and sophomore years in high school. The program is beginning its third year in two Kansas City, Kan., high schools. Other members of the Fusion Reading team are Irma Brasseur, project coordinator, and Jean Stribling, Kadie Lintner, Caroline Mark, and Kari Wolverton.
Xtreme Reading is similar to Fusion Reading in that it is an intensive reading class, but instruction is compressed into half the time. The year-long course aggressively teaches all of the current SIM reading strategies in slightly modified forms plus several Content Enhancement Routines and a motivation strategy. It is being tested in 17 schools across the country. The Xtreme Reading team consists of KU-CRL director Don Deshler, Hock, KU-CRL associate director Jean Schumaker, Jan Bulgren, and Susan Bulgren.
Link to Ms. Tollefson press release and to the KU Center for Research on Learning.
Margarette Pang will open a tutoring center in Hawai’i to help individuals in with dyslexia. It’s an interesting idea, in part because Ms. Pang has had reading difficulties and is concerned about similar problems for her children.
Now one Oahu woman is on a mission to help those who struggle with this learning disability.
Margarette Pang witnesses the fruits of her labor.
She’s about to open a dyslexia tutoring center in Kapolei.
It’s a learning disability she understands all too well.
I hope that the tutoring training Ms. Pang received will cause her to deliver evidence-based, effective tutoring. Link to the story (looks like there’s video available, too).
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US National Public Radio’s Morning Edition had a segment in its “StoryCorps” series about Sean Plasse, an adult who explained how Learning Disabilities has affected his life. In the story, under the title of “Overcoming Dyslexia, and Turning a Corner in Life,” Mr. Plasse explained that it was only after he had quite successfully coped with his Learning Disabilities throughout school and into the beginning of his adult work life that he learned he had Learning Disabilities.
Link to the print version of the story where one can also find a link to the audio version.
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