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There are great differences between younger and older children who are experiencing difficulties with learning. The younger group, the five to seven year olds concern us because they've fallen behind in learning to read and write for the first time. Older children have been having difficulties for a number of years, and have developed a range of secondary problems because of this. While both groups have many similar needs, there are also great differences between them which need to be examined. Some examples of these differences will help to illustrate what I mean. Younger and older children Case study - David: I recently worked with a 12 year old boy who we will call David. He was in year six at an elementary school in a depressed public housing suburb. I worked directly with David, with his class teacher, school support staff, and his parents. He could not read or write, and it took more than a year to get him to even attempt to write on his own, despite good progress with his reading. He was an extremely reluctant writer even though he had developed to the point of being able to write (copy) so that others could read it. He would not write in the classroom or when other children were present, and his progress was extremely limited because of his fear of failure and his belief that he had to be absolutely accurate at all times. Despite the efforts of his teachers and parents to encourage him to try, and to structure opportunities for him to be successful, little progress was made. David was acutely aware of the differences between himself and other children, and this manifested itself in extremely violent behaviour whenever he felt threatened by a learning situation at home or in class. In lessons which he considered 'safe' (such as copying) he would work quite well and usually not disrupt other students. (I am not an advocate of copying, but there were lessons where this happened!)
Case study - Sammy: Sammy was a nine year old boy, and had just changed schools. He told his mother that he liked his new teacher. When asked why, he replied that he hadn't been embarrassed once all day! We investigated this and found that although his previous teacher was capable, conscientious and concerned about him, she used teaching methods within her classroom which drew attention to his difficulties. This caused him anxiety and loss of self esteem. He withdraw from all learning and social situations, and his reading and writing deteriorated to such an extent that both his parents and teacher were really concerned. In his new classroom the teacher understood how to structure learning so that all students trusted her and felt secure. He was able to become a normal class member without any undue attention. He began to join in, to take risks, and to work normally in all lessons. He began writing, which had previously been a real problem, because his teacher recognised the effort which went into it, and valued his efforts. Because his attempts were acknowledged he remained involved in the process of learning, regained his skills and confidence, and his social development returned to normal.
Case study - Nigel: Nigel was five years old, had been at school for three months. He was a bright child with excellent language skills. He was in an exceptionally warm, caring class, where most of the class were beginning to write. Typically they would draw a picture and then write a sentence or two about it, using alphabet charts to help their own invented spelling. But he just refused to try. When pressed he became quite agitated and almost violent. His teacher and I planned to try something to get him started, so when the other children were out of the room we sat him down with pencil and paper and asked him to write his daily story. He became quite angry and said that he couldn't write, leapt from his chair, and tried to leave the room. We insisted that he could write, gave him an alphabet chart, and demanded that he try. He gave in after a few more attempts to avoid the task and copied letters randomly all over the page, and drew a picture. He was obviously pleased with what he'd done, so he 'read' us his story and we responded appreciatively. His attempt was 'published' on a display board which all the children used. After this he continued to write, became familiar with the letter shapes, and three weeks later he had begun to write 'words' made up of letters in a line, from left to right. We hadn't actually 'taught' him anything but we had started him off and got him involved. He was soon really enthusiastic about writing. Most importantly, he was learning about writing through being a writer, and became responsible for his own progress.
Comparisons Whereas 12 year old David showed little progress over a year and then still wasn't involved in the process of learning, it took one lesson to turn the five year old child's perception of himself as a writer around. The nine year old Sammy's problems were more entrenched, but not to the degree that they couldn't be changed, although he remained very much at risk. Older children have learned a great deal about their inabilities, and have changed their behaviours to protect themselves. They are extremely threatened in learning situations in the classroom and at home. Younger children just haven't had the time to gain such experience of failure and inadequacy, and are therefore easier to convince, and are more willing to believe that they can succeed. All three are typical of children who are not achieving their potential in school. They appear to have a learning difficulty (which is real to them) but their difficulty is not their intellectual ability, but their inability to participate in the processes of learning because of their fear of the consequences such as embarrassment, ridicule, or being seen as different. Motivation to learnIn my work with children with learning difficulties I am continually amazed at their tenacious desire to learn. This might seem like a strange thing to say about children who are struggling with learning, who are unsuccessful every day, and act in anti-school ways, but I have yet to meet one who, beneath the surface behaviours didn't want desperately to learn! This applies equally to the toughest kids from the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods, and to older children who have experienced years of failure, frustration and embarrassment. Max Kemp (1987, p25) has also found this to be the case:
Case study - Narelle: Narelle was 12 years old, in year seven, and her teacher was concerned that her creative writing was not progressing. She was a member of a group of girls who were all very keen and capable writers, and although she sat with them she wrote very little, wasted her time, and had begun to distract them from their work. I began to work with her away from the group to allow her to explore what she was doing, and the only way I could get her to write at all was to guarantee that she could put her stories in the rubbish bin after she had read them to me. Under these rules she began to write. Retrieving them from the bin later I could see that her written ideas and her language usage were excellent - but she threw those stories away for three weeks before she trusted me to see one. Her main concern was that she believed that she was a poor student because she couldn't produce a perfect piece of writing on her first draft. She quickly learned to take control of editing her own work and proved to be an excellent speller if given a couple of tries at a word. When she understood that she was as capable as her peers she settled down to work normally.
Case Study - Graham: Graham was a very willing student. He was in year seven but his spelling was consistently poor and he was very anxious about it. I went over his last few stories and made a record of the more common words he was having trouble with. We looked these over together and devised a plan to work on about five words each week. He spent time learning them in class and for homework.. At the end of each week he was tested on them. At first he wasn't very good at this, so we worked on the methods he used to remember them and he improved immensely. However, despite his success on the weekly tests he still misspelled these words in his written work! One example is the word 'because'. In a test he could spell it, but in his stories he spelled it in several different ways. He wrote beacuse, becase, becouse, becuase, becaus. Later, when I pointed this out to him and asked him how to spell 'because' he got it right every time. After six months of frustration I discovered another method of teaching him called 'Old Way-New Way'. This worked and he learned to control the spelling of most key words in his writing after that. Click here to see more on Old Way New Way http://www.personalbest.com.au/ Despite Graham's long standing spelling problem he was still motivated to work on it until he found a way to overcome it.
There is a principle of teaching here which should be understood by everyone who has any responsibility for children. Every child wants to learn. When starting with this premise - and believing it totally - it enables parents and teachers to begin exploring children's circumstances with a clear view of what motivates their behaviours, and also provides the means of changing them. I believe that there are no exceptions. I hear people say that this child is lazy; that child needs to be made to learn. Don't believe it! Every child really wants to learn but something is getting in the way! Everyone is motivated by personal success. When this is denied them, children build defences to protect their self image in the presence of those people who are most important to them. We must not be fooled into dealing with the symptoms when we can cure the disease. Behaviour and learningAlthough there are many causes of poor behaviour, children who misbehave often have learning difficulties. Children who are having difficulties tend to display behaviours ranging from one extreme to the other: from being very quiet and unobtrusive in class to being very disruptive. It all depends on whether the child can hide the problem from others. If it cannot be hidden from peers then there is more likelihood of a backlash of poor behaviour in the classroom to draw attention away from the real issue. At home their behaviours are more likely to be naturally expressed; and more likely to be quite challenging for parents to handle.
Case study - Sally: Sally, at six and a half years old, was a destroyer. She disrupted the class continually, and physically and verbally bullied the other children. Sally had been at school for 18 months but had not begun to read or write meaningfully. I worked with her, her peers, her parents and her teacher, and for some weeks she maintained her stance of safe involvement in anything related to reading or writing. She was a very strong-willed child. When reading she pretended to read, but wouldn't (couldn't) follow the print. For Writing, she copied words from around the room every day. She knew something was wrong and she wasn't going to let anyone find out she couldn't read or write so her defences were up! After a while she tasted a little success with the selection of more appropriate books to read, learning where to look to follow the printed words on the page, and acceptance by her parents of her efforts to write (with appropriate rewarding feedback). Soon she learned to identify individual words and follow print in the right direction on the page. She began to take some risks with attempting new words in her stories. Her behaviour slowly moderated as she became more involved in the literacy learning process, achieved some success, and began to see herself as a contributing member of the class. The growth in her reading and writing confidence was matched by an outstanding improvement in her interpersonal behaviour in the classroom, in the yard, and some improvement at home.
I hope that this doesn't sound too easy and simple, because it wasn't. Her teacher was tempted to try more direct behaviour modification methods in the beginning when she was slow to respond and very disruptive, but she helped her succeed in little ways at first and small changes began, and these signs helped us trust that our course was correct. We had to believe that she wanted to learn despite her daily behaviour which seemed to say the opposite.
Then there are children like Michael who are the victims of school systems and what purports to be teaching 'excellence', who are driven to extreme behaviours to avoid complete humiliation. Unfortunately, there are many cases like Michael's in our public schools where 'integration' policies have been introduced under the guise that it is in the children's best interests, but in reality the motivation is economic. It is more about dollars than children's lives.
Case study - Michael: Michael was a well behaved boy who had been taught in Special Classes for most of his six years of primary schooling. However at the beginning of his seventh year the school administration decided to place him in a mainstream class permanently, as part of his transition out of Special Education classes, "to get him ready for High School" where there was no provision for special children. He was several years behind his age peers in all literacy areas, but he could read and write and he had always been keen to work and learn. Michael's new teacher had a reputation for his commitment to excellence, had very high standards of discipline and work, but was very inflexible. Michael was immediately exposed as being totally incapable of doing any of the work at the standard required in this class. He changed completely. He abused his teacher and continually disrupted the class, (behaviour which was totally out of character and which we had never seen before). Away from the classroom Michael was his old self: willing and eager to learn. Unfortunately, his teacher was unwilling to accept any advice, or change or adapt Michael's programme in any way and so the behaviour problems remained. Michael was then shared around amongst various teachers to give his class some relief. Because this also gave Michael some relief, and the other teachers were more understanding and allowed him to work on more appropriate tasks, he worked well in their rooms, but never settled down in his home class. Senior staff saw the problem as being Michael's poor behaviour and refused to do anything constructive about his placement. His growth in learning for that year was negligible and it was difficult to watch him suffer because of his exacting teacher.
We are sometimes inclined to see the behaviour itself as the problem rather than looking to its causes. D B Center et al (1982) reports from the results of his research that:
By providing curriculum appropriate to their ability levels, Center showed that children's behaviour problems were greatly reduced.
In Sally's case she had to understand that she could cope with the demands of the curriculum; that she could produce similar results to her peers; that what she was going through was normal. Her teacher understood this and planned her teaching around the needs of her students. In contrast to this Michael's teacher was unwilling to change anything for his students. He knew how and what he was going to teach before he even met his students. Because his philosophy of teaching and learning was so narrow he believed that he was a good teacher, and that behaviour problems were to be handled by extra discipline alone. He was focussed on his own understanding of 'excellence': knowledge, output, accuracy, neatness, and obedience. Michael simply needed appropriate learning tasks, some protection for his self esteem, and encouragement and permission to do his best while reading and writing at his level. He also needed feedback which valued his efforts and gave him the heart to continue learning. Avoidance of learningSome students display a range of 'avoidance' behaviours. These are strategies which are employed by the child to avoid the embarrassment of failure, of being 'different'. The motivation for this behaviour is basically FEAR. Children's fears are usually about being rejected by their peers, and also about losing status in the eyes of significant people such as teachers or parents. They believe that this would happen if they are seen to be incapable in any way.
Avoidance
behaviours may be quite subtle, such as finding excuses not to work, feeling
sick, going to the toilet at crucial times, losing books, breaking pencils or
pens; or they may be more overt, ranging from grossly disruptive
outbursts, interference with or hurting other children, and attention seeking
which is designed to distract attention away from the learning task. Yet another
group of children use quite passive behaviours such as withdrawing into
themselves, trying not to be noticed, never asking questions, working slowly, or
refusing to work. Narelle and Sally both displayed classic avoidance of learning
behaviour. Jack was different in that he was a passive avoider of learning.
Case study - Jack: Jack had just begun year three and his teacher was mildly concerned because he didn't seem to retain knowledge or understand what was being taught. He seemed quite slow at times - although at times he worked diligently and produced similar work to all the other children. Some of his books appeared to reflect normal work. He had one close friend. Upon closer examination of Jack I discovered that he couldn't yet read or write! He had avoided detection by copying everything, letter by letter (or really shape by shape), very quickly and accurately! His bookwork looked quite neat and normal. He had a fantastic memory and memorised the stories in his reading books but he hadn't yet sorted out the sounds or the names of the alphabet! Jack wanted to learn but had chosen to hide his problems when he found that he was having difficulty. All his energies went into his charade. It was more important for him to appear to be successful (or normal) than to alert anyone to his problems. There are a lot of Jacks in classrooms who are hiding their inabilities behind very passive behaviours. Unless they are discovered and helped in the first few years of school their problems compound and get progressively worse.
ConfidenceChildren with learning difficulties lack confidence in specific things, yet often are quite capable in other areas. It is important to distinguish between the child's natural personal confidence away from the school situation, and confidence on the difficult task. As the case studies of David and Michael show - children who have problems for a long time grow ever less confident in more areas, and are most difficult to help, while younger children can quickly regain their confidence. Confidence is critical for learning. Children who are low on confidence are unwilling to take risks. For instance, beginning readers who lack confidence don't like to experiment too much, or use trial and error strategies to solve problems because it is too risky. It causes too many miscues. They prefer to examine the text very carefully (to avoid mistakes) and this makes them become word by word readers, rather than treat it as a treasure hunt for meaning clues. Unconfident beginning writers also tend to write less and copy far longer than others before trying to create their own messages with their own words and spellings.
Case study -Shaun: Confidence oozed from Shaun when I met him at the supermarket with his mum. At seven years old he was the man of the house (!) and he had his say on everything. This was not the same boy I had seen in the classroom. The Shaun I saw trying to write was insecure, cautious in the extreme, and extremely reluctant to attempt any new word unless he knew it was 'right'. All this despite a most caring teacher and a writing programme which valued and rewarded everyone's' attempts. Every other child in that room was writing profusely. Shaun cried a lot when asked to read too. After many battles we (mother and teachers) finally convinced him that he could read, but writing still remained a problem. Despite all our efforts to get him to take risks and experiment with new words he would insist on writing the same story (the same words) every day. Then, when we overcame that - every word he wrote had to be checked before he put it in his story. This placed us in a dilemma because he couldn't yet spell very well - and we wanted to encourage him to keep on trying. If we said a word was nearly right he wouldn't write it; if we said it was OK, he wanted to know precisely whether it was correct or not! Finally the breakthrough came when we decided to lie to him and tell him everything was correct!!!! Soon he was involved as a normal learner and writer (and his spelling improved too). Somewhere in Shaun's past he had learned that he couldn't read or write perfectly, and as he was a perfectionist by nature his confidence on those tasks was almost zero. This was in stark contrast to his out of school personality which was naturally outgoing and confident. DependenceSome children become extremely dependent upon outside assistance for reading and writing. When trying to spell a word they will rarely 'have a go' on their own, but will seek the answer from another child, the teacher, or yesterday's story; or they will choose to use an easier word. Similar behaviours are seen for reading: a new word prompts them to look at you for the answer, or wait to be told. They won't practise reading or writing either, but will wait until forced to do so by teachers or parents. Even then there may be a range of avoidance behaviours because they are not in control of the situation. Adults teach children to become dependent upon them. With Reading particularly, it is obvious that some children have always had their problems solved for them. These children are absolutely helpless when faced with any sort of reading problem. Parents make their children dependent because they help too much by providing the solutions before the child has had time to explore the problem. Learning StyleIt is obvious that most of the above characteristics of children are interrelated. Of these the behavioural aspects are usually secondary factors. That is, behaviours occur as a result of something else, and in my opinion teachers should not spend time trying to change the behaviours until every other option has been tried. I consider that the factors of confidence, attention, anxiety, and independence are the most important characteristics to focus upon as they reflect more truly the state of the child, and are subject to change in response to successful learning. When faced with the threat of embarrassment or failure children's learning style changes. On one subject they can appear quite confident, yet on another the confidence disappears and their performance suffers. This is often seen with different achievement levels in Maths and Reading. A new teacher can also cause similar changes if the child is apprehensive or unsure about the teacher's approach.
To collectively describe these four factors I prefer to use the term 'Learning Style'. The Learning Style Scale is a barometer for you to use to indicate how well the processes are working. The scale (above) allows for the recording of all four attributes together. Select a subject such as Reading, and simply score (tick) your child's attitude on each line between the extremes for that subject. This will tell you about your child's learning style for that subject. eg. Scores to the left indicate a problem while scores to the right indicate a better learning style. Your goal will be to help your child move to the right on every line. Click here for more information on Learning Styles. Remember, a new scale should be used for each subject area. This scale is useful for helping you identify what things to observe. Of the four items, the first ones to work on are the last two: independence and confidence. If you can improve these then you will see changes in their attentiveness and anxiety as well. The scale provides you with a starting point, with your aim being to influence the child's learning experiences so that they change from being inattentive, anxious, dependent, and cautious - to becoming attentive, calm, independent, and confident. The challenge for you is to work out how to achieve this. If you ignore their learning style and try to teach in a way which leaves them permanently on the left hand side they will never be successful independent learners. By monitoring their progress in this way you can check whether their learning is on track or not, and make decisions about their learning programs. You can be reassured that if you are ticking towards the right hand side they are becoming healthier learners. If you judge that they are not becoming more attentive, calmer, independent and confident then you need to change their learning program as a priority. This could mean changing what is happening at home, changing teachers or classes, or changing to a new school. Whatever has to be done must be done to ensure that your child is in an appropriate learning environment. Don't put it off till next year either, as the child could be suffering unbearably each and every day.
References
Builder, P.,
Exploring Reading, Empowering
Readers with Special
Centre, D.B,
Deitz, S.M, and Kaufman, M.E, “Student difficulty,
Kemp, M,
Watching Children Read and Write: Observational Lyndon, Harry, http://www.personalbest.com.au/
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