Hello everyone! We are Xènia and Roger, and with this publication we aimed to introduce you two ways to improve learning strategies for people who suffer from LD.
LD is defined as a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations (IDEA Regulations, 34 C.F.R. 300.7).
Our first finding was an strategic note taking for pupils with LD in High School lessons(what in Catalonia is known as Batxillerat). It is assessed that students who took notes increased their attention to lecture material, were actively engaged in lectures, elaborated on lecture information, sought to clarify their understanding of confusing points and improved their performance of lecture.
WHICH DIFFICULITIES AFFECT?Spelling
Processing
Low speed in handwriting
Too verbatim (literal) note taking
Selection of main points
HOW TO TAKE NOTES USEFULLY? GUIDED NOTES (Lazarus, 1991) seem to be a the powerful tool to note taking. It consists in giving a guided sheet in whic they must write on their own notes:
At the beginning of the lesson, they have to first identify the topic and activate their previous knowledge about it in order to make the new information more meaningful, as well as naming main points while during it.
Similarly, then they have to summarize (or categorize) the ideas to help encoding and storage of information in long-term memory.
Lastly, they should make a "review" to enhance encoding (Kiewra, 1985).
DO YOU WANT TO TRAIN ON IT?This strategy needs some TRAINING before being used, pointing it’s purpose and modeling it. That means that the teacher can use it in front of the classe
Thinking out loud what he or she is writting and how to do not do verbatism (literal expressions).
Telling that no matter grammatical errors as long as notes are written legibly.
Ask for doubts.
*The results showed more number of words written, more free-recall results immediatelly and more long-term recall as well as improving their comprehension of the lecture for those who applied that way of notetaking.
The other study shows that students with LD can learn punctuation strategies at a high level of mastery and can generalize their skills to sentence editing and sentence construction tasks when taught through interactive multimedia. (Schumaker, Fisher & Walsh, 2019). IM programs have been tested for teaching students as learning strategies. They can be distributed easily by mail or on a computer network. Moreover, it can be operated on computers or hand-held devices either.
The intervention is by IM Punctuation Strategies Program. There are a total of 11 lessons in the program. Each lesson focuses on one punctuation rule:
The period
Question mark
Exclamation mark
Apostrophe
Hyphen
Quotation mark
Semicolon
Colon
After the sixth lesson in the program is placed a cumulative review lesson, which helps students to integrate what they have learned.
The instructional methodology that this instructional sequence represents is based on empirically validated methods for teaching strategies to students with LD (Ellis, Deshler, Lenz, Schumaker, & Clark, 1991). Students with LD need frequent and specific feedback about their correct and incorrect responses. Moreover, they need to reach mastery on each skill and on combining and generalizing previously learned skills before they move on to the next skill. (Schumaker, Fisher & Walsh, 2019).
In our opinion both of the techniques can be used complementary, it is, when giving oral lessons, guided note taking can be a more powerful tool, and afterwards, they can use IM on their computers in order to improve their learning performance and giving a more dynamic and inclusive lessons style.
REFERENCES
Boyle, J. & Weishaar, M. (2002). The Effects of Strategic Notetaking on the Recall and Comprehension of Lecture Information for High School Students with Learning Disabilities. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 16(3), 133–141
Shumarker, J.B.,Fisher, J. B., B,.& Walsh, L. D. (2019). Effects of computerized instruction on the use of punctuation strategies by students with Id. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice. https://0-doi-org.cataleg.udg.edu/10.1111/ldrp.12203
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