My teaching partner and I are doing an inservice for our elementary staff on what it feels like to have a learning disibility. We would like some activities we could do with the staff that would make them aware of what children go through every day in a regular classroom when they have a learning disibility. We would like activities that would demonstrate what the learning environment looks like or sounds like to a child with visual-motor, visual processing, auditory processing or memory problems. Any ideas? Please E-mail me Thanks
F.A.T. workshop
Have you seen the video “How Difficult Can THis Be? The F>A>T> workshop”? (Click on “LD STORE” at the top of hte page and it will get you to more info.) Rick Lavoie does a lot of these activities, and does them very well.
It’s tough to accurately simulate a disability in a workshop (for one thing, it’s a workshop and you could just walk out; you can’t walk out of a classroom without consequences). In a sped class we were asked to “adopt” a disability for a social interaction with a stranger. The easiest thing to manage logistically was buying gas (um, this was before pay at the pump! I’m dating myself ;)) with a “speech impediment.”
Very, very tough.
Re: F.A.T. workshop
Wouldn’t it be just perfect to be able to think we can understand just exactly what it is a child goes through everyday with a learning disability? I have tried to put myself in that position, its a very hard place to be especially on your own self-worth, (like watching someone ice skating so gracefully and its made to look so easy until you try it yourself and are flat on your behind do you dare try that again? Not in front of an audience thats for sure)you become affraid to fail at it, or don’t like people making remarks about how clumsy you are, so you give up. But if one person comes along takes them by the hand and glides them though it so they can see for themselves just how fun or exciting it can be wouldn’t they be more willing to try again? For a child who cannot communicate to the person who is trying to help them WHY they cannot do it, because they don’t understand all the technical reason and proper lables we have for learning disabilities, they just know they can’t do it.
I think that if you can really role play this and include the emotional distress the children also go through you will succeed in making these student become the brilliant little people they really are.
To similate an environment for a personwho has a hearing impairment you can have the people put cotton in their ears or earplugs and then have someone talk to them with their hand over their mouth or facing the other way or even talking with the lights out. They will realize how the person with a hearing impairment uses their eyes to make up for what their ears don’t.