"How Can I Help Children With Learning Disabilities?"

The article, "How Can I Help Children with Learning Disabilities," was particularly interesting to me because I am a special education major, focusing on learning disabilities. There were a number of great examples used in the text, and a variety of ideas to use in a classroom with children who have learning disabilities. Now more than ever, we are seeing more mainstream classrooms, where children with learning disabilities are being incorporated into the general education class. It is important that we are reaching out to all of the children in our classrooms, to make sure each and every child is benefiting from their education and time spent in the classroom. Just because a child has a learning disability, does not mean that we need to overlook their needs, but foster their development by coming up with proper instruction techniques.

There are several comprehension techniques that were discussed in this article that are extremely important for students. The first way to foster comprehension is to use collaborative learning in the classroom. Working in collaborative learning groups can be beneficial to children with learning disabilities because it allows students to work with students that have various achievement levels. Working with students that have higher achievement levels, might challenge children with learning disabilities and give them a chance to step out of their comfort zone and work with children that they otherwise would not. It is also important for teachers to collaborate with other teachers to come up with the most effective instruction strategies so they can ensure the students are going to benefit from the material. Communication is another key component of teaching comprehension strategies to children with learning disabilities. Communication between students, parents, and the teacher is absolutely vital for students with learning disabilities not only for comprehension strategies but also in terms of behavior and academic interventions. Providing students with the expectations and standards early on, allows them to know exactly what is expected of them from early on, so the communication lines are open and there is no confusion. These are several of the important issues that were discussed in this article that will really help students with learning disabilities.

It is also important to create a classroom environment where the students feel comfortable participating in various activities that promote comprehension. Mixing up the activities for reading and comprehension keeps things exciting for the students which can be more motivating for them to work with and complete. As future teachers, we want to make sure we are keeping the idea of comprehension exciting for students and promoting reading comprehension in a meaningful way, to show children the purpose of such assignments.