F.A.T.

City
Problem Ownership
What might this look like for a student with learning disabilities?
Experiencing
Frustration and
Anxiety

Processing
(Pace)

Anxiety affects performance

Students are unable to extract information or they shut down
completely (give up, I dont know)
First human reaction to anxiety is to look away from source
Students with disabilities have difficult time processing language;
they have twice the processing load than other students (have to
process language AND question) so it takes them longer to answer
Students are so nervous theyre going to be called on that they cant
process the information

Distraction

Distractable (equally interested in EVERYTHING that is going oncant focus anything out, everything gets attention)

Risk-taking

Dont like surprises or dealing with things if they dont know whats
coming up
Wont volunteer because there is no positive reinforcement for
answering, risk being reprimanded for incorrect answer
Why should I play this game? If I get the answer right, he (the
teacher) wont say anything and if I get it wrong, he will embarrass
me

Additional Notes:
Common for children with disabilities to call others out on their mistakes
Greatest gift teachers can give students is the gift of time
Teachers use rhetorical questions against students
Students learn according to what they see, not what we tell them

General Notes/Suggested Accommodations

Visual
Perception(blurry
picture)

Teachers try to bribe students by giving them things, or begin taking

things away (cant go to recess, send note home to parents, drop
down a reading level)
Teachers blame the victim, not trying hard enough- assume its a
motivational problemthis is WRONG!
Learning disabilities dont have to do with motivation, have to do
with perception- students see, but they dont perceive
Teachers need to give direct instruction- dont expect students to
teach themselves; they need trained, experienced teachers
Students can feel isolated because theyre the only one in class that
cant perform the task
Teachers assume that if students understand every word in a
paragraph, they are able to understand the passage
Comprehension has more to do with background than it does with
vocabulary
Students need direct instruction- cant learn on their own

Reading
Comprehension(t
wo stories, one
with known vocab,
one without)

Visual
Perception(title
for a story)

Visual Motor
(handwriting in a
mirror)

Eyes tell student to go right, hands tell them to go left

Mixed messages from eyes and hands
Writing is extremely difficult

Oral Expression
(story without a
the letter n)

Brain functions: storage and retrieval

Children with disabilities cant get information out, or they get it
out and use it and cant put it back in the right place- when they
need it again they dont know where to find it
Tasks are either associative (two or more at a time, e.g. drive and
talk) or cognitive (one at a time)
For children with Dysnomia, speaking is a cognitive process
We learn as children that spatial orientation doesnt change the
object (a watch is a watch no matter which way it is orientated)
Children with disabilities will confuse the letters p, d, b, q- for the
first time in life, spatial orientation matters
All energy goes into decoding of the material, dont know what the
content is/dont understand

Reading and
Decoding
(story with
interchangeable
pdbq)

Students with learning disabilities often get in trouble and they

dont know what they did wrong (perceive things differently)
They respond to a stimulus they perceive- teacher determines what
stimulus is, dont understand students viewpoint

Auditory and
Visual
Capabilities
(story understood
by listening)

Auditory learners have to hear the material before it makes any

sense
Some students need books on tape (understand text through ears but
not through eyes)

What is fairness?
Fairness means that everyone gets what he/she needs