5.9 Helping Students with Specific Learning Difficulties in Reading and
• They get tired easily from the efforts required to read and write.
• They may have difficulty understanding what they read.
• They have fluctuating academic performance.
• Besides the specific difficulties in reading and writing mentioned above, some students may also have difficulties in mathematics, in oral/written comprehension and expression, and in visual-spatial perception.
b. Behaviour Checklist for the Screening of Specific Learning Difficulties (For Primary School Pupils)
The Behaviour Checklist contains items covering observation of a student’s literacy, cognitive/social-emotional behaviour. Teachers can make use of the Behaviour Checklist to identify areas of a student’s learning difficulties and, in collaboration with parents and the student guidance officers, provide support for these students at school.
(2) General Principles of Remediation
In general, these students need more time to learn and more deliberate planning to ensure progress. They need continued support from parents and teachers. Some tips for helping these students in the mainstream classrooms:
a. Ensure good communication between parents and teachers to better understand and help these students.
b. Enhance motivation and confidence in learning. For example:
• Value students’ efforts and progress.
• Build on their strengths, allow alternative responses to written questions or give them some responsibilities in class, etc.
• Build on peer support.
c. Make accommodation in teaching and learning to facilitate their access to the curriculum.
• Enhance memory through multi-sensory teaching and hands-on experience.
• Adapt the curriculum, e.g. break the learning task into smaller steps and, in a structured and sequential manner, help them master key words/high frequency words and basic language skills.
• Seat them near the teacher to improve concentration and facilitate copying from the blackboard.
• Provide a copy of class notes if they have difficulties copying from the blackboard.
• Reduce the amount of copying and correction work.
• Allow alternative ways to do classwork, tests or examinations (e.g. circling or underlining the answers instead of writing).
• Allow extra time for tests and examinations.
• Reduce the amount required for dictation and allow extra time.
• Consider alternative methods of assessment.
• Utilize computer-assisted learning software, etc.
(3) Enhancing Skills in Reading and Writing
a. Multi-sensory Teaching
For example, read a word aloud while tracing the Chinese character on a piece of sand paper simultaneously (hence involving auditory, visual, tactile and motor functions).
b. Daily Assessment and Teaching for Primary Aged Children (Datapac) Arrange for parents, teachers or senior students to spend about fifteen minutes daily to teach a student a small number of words (five to ten words) until mastery.
c. Paired Reading
Encourage parents, teachers or senior students to do paired reading with the student regularly. This allows the student to access meaning and facilitates reading for meaning and enjoyment.
For more suggestions on helping students to improve their Chinese word reading and writing abilities, please refer to Chapter 5, paragraphs (3) d and e, and (4) a to g under Section 5.9 of the Chinese version.
(4) Assessment Policy and Accommodations
a. General Principles of Internal Assessment
• Schools should review their assessment methods to ensure that they serve the purpose of the assessment. If the purpose is to assist students to review their progress and identify future learning targets, more individualized instead of standardized methods should be adopted. Such individualized methods may include
portfolio assessment, oral tests/examinations, the use of drawings/ graphs instead of written answers, etc.
• Schools should not rely too much on factual recall to demonstrate mastery of the subject content, nor on reading or writing as a method of assessment.
• If the curriculum has been tailored to meet a student’s special needs, the content as well as the method of assessment should also be adjusted accordingly.
• There are some students who can achieve the learning objectives of a curriculum but the standardized arrangements for the assessment may present a barrier to them. Schools should consider making provision for special arrangements so that these students can demonstrate their attainment in tests and examinations.
b. Students with specific learning difficulties in reading and writing are likely to have experienced difficulties in at least one of the areas given below:
• Reading Accuracy – may affect the understanding of what the student reads.
• Reading Speed – the student may lose the sense of what he or she reads; may also affect the rate of work.
• Spelling/Dictation – may significantly slow down the rate of work, resulting in the use of alternative words that are easier to spell or failure to achieve any score in the marking of spelling.
• Handwriting Speed
• Handwriting Legibility
• Other Difficulties – e.g. attention and concentration, clumsiness and disorganization of such severity as to prevent the student from demonstrating his or her attainment.
c. Adjustments in Internal Tests and Examinations
• Time Allowance – The needs of most students with specific learning difficulties in reading and writing will be met by an additional time allowance of up to 25% of the test/examination time.
• Means of Access to Questions – The reading of questions to students is permitted where there is a considerable discrepancy between reading ability and reasoning ability.
• Means of Presenting and Scoring Responses
— Allow the use of a word processor as a tool for writing (spell-checks, thesauri or similar electronic devices will not be permitted).
— Make a verbatim transcript of any sections of a student’s script which would be difficult for the examiner to decipher.
— For cases in which extreme writing difficulty is demonstrated, the student may dictate answers (verbatim) to the examiner.
— Provide alternative ways to answer questions (e.g. use numbers to replace the need for copying when placing fragmented sentences in the correct sequence; underline or encircle the correct answers in the passage instead of copying from the passage etc.)
— Avoid penalizing students for poor spelling/ dictation or poor handwriting.
• Presentation/Layout of the Question Paper
— The student may use a large print version of the test.
— Set enough space for answers.
— Put the text, the questions and space for writing answers on the same page. Avoid the use of separate answer sheets particularly for young students.
— Give clear instructions, highlighting keywords and examples.
— Allow the use of a highlighter for marking in the test booklet.
— Prompt the (young) student to attend to the test/ examination when he or she seems to have lost attention or when he or she has inadvertently missed out working on some pages of the test/ examination paper.
Adopt Sensory Approaches Enhance Memory Skills