In my career I truly feel I have misdiagnosed
children with learning disabilities and I feel as a nation we have set a
precedence that a child needs to "fail" enough before we will allow
them special education services or an appropriate instructional match. When I
think back to the many children that went through the "wait to fail"
model many of them were actually not learning disabled after all because they lacked early intervention. Waiting
until 4th grade to strategically look at a child's learning patterns is frankly
just too late.
It is often said the early intervention window is
"birth to 5" however it is really "birth to 3rd grade".
This is a vital time in a child's life, in which we can get the biggest bang
for our buck and see rapid growth. After 3rd grade the early intervention
window comes to a close and one would predict a more stagnant learning pace as
application starts to build.
What if we strategically looked at young children
differently and allowed them more time to achieve mastery than others in the
early years? Don't they deserve to be given that time? Let’s make it our
mission to create optimal learning conditions for ALL children.
Working at a child’s
instructional level allows for a high rate of on-task behavior, task
completion, and comprehension. Optimal learning conditions are present at this
level.
Betts,
F.A. Foundations of Reading Instruction. New York: American Book Company, 1957.
Interventions
on the GO will feature an “Intervention of
the Week” that you can use and implement in your classroom tomorrow! Stay
tuned!
Shannon
Labels: Early Intervention