Do we try to listen when we hear children talk? Do we observe them while they are just
sitting, standing, walking, playing or when interacting with their peers or adults around?
Yes, we do!... but instead, the general tendency is to look for being mischief? Or If they are following the guidelines of appropriate behavior.
Just because these children do not appear to be much dissimilar from the rest of their associates.
It doesn’t mean we assume that the student is physically equipped to cope with the educational tasks in the classroom.
For the reading impaired students, we look at the eyes. Do the eyes track smoothly along the line? Which is vital for reading. Do their eyes converge? that is actually seeing one binocular image.
So, instead of just trying to help poor readers by having them to practice over and over again, with different techniques such as teaching generalizations, or decoding. Although, the approaches are proven to do wonderful things, but those are only ”educational ”
means of remediation, and is not meant to address the underlying causes of ’why’ there is a delay in acquiring accuracy and fluency in reading.
Therefore, vision being our primary sense, it's time to look into the visual perceptual difficulties as well.
Hearing: Are they listening (not hearing) to what's being said, especially in a group situation? Or do they have auditory discrimination problems or they suffer from acoustic delay?
Writing/Dysgraphia: Has the child got the physical ability to write? Do they have the fine muscle control to be able to write? Are they holding the pencil in an awkward grip or strangling it with pressure.
To sum up, when it comes to providing an intervention for remediation, we need to view the difficulties they’re manifesting from a different perspective.
If we as educators, begin to take into account that the visual and auditory perceptual disorders are the contributing factors for learning challenges.
We will better be able to build/ provide a solid foundation in support of the academic endeavors of our young learners.