Author: Silvia Mascarenhas | May 26, 2016
Mary, a friendly and cheerful girl studying in Std. 4 recently visited Sethu for a psycho-educational assessment. Although she is a very bright child, she has severe difficulties in reading, spelling and Math.
I observed that Mary still counts by drawing tally marks, an addition strategy that is taught to very young children who need visual cues to count. In fact, she tends to add numbers even while doing subtraction. Her confusion with mathematical signs adds to her problems. She does her computations from left to right instead of right to left. The concept of carryover seems alien to her. Her difficulties in Math are compounded by her inability to read. Sadly, she is still unable to identify all the alphabets with ease. Mary performs well at oral tasks and could easily answer questions related to general knowledge. However she gets stumped when it comes to written tasks.
Because of the ‘no failing’ policy, Mary has been promoted every year and is in Std. 4. Unfortunately her school has not provided special educator inputs, a structured literacy program, accommodations in how she is taught and modifications to the curriculum. She attends paid after-school remedial classes but the struggle for her teacher lies between ‘finishing the portion’ of her class and helping Mary learn to read, write and do Math with understanding, at the most basic level where she is at present.
This is a common dilemma that many teachers and parents of children with specific learning disability face. Classrooms across Goa are filled with children with different needs. They need special educators in the school who are competent in addressing their individual needs, a system that allows multisensory approaches to learning, adaptations in the curriculum and modification of evaluation methods, so that every child experiences success at their level and there is a clear road map to ensure progress towards expected learning outcomes.