BLOG #11 Smart Kids with School Problems

There are factors to consider with a student's developmental level. The student's age, social and emotional maturity, and intellectual development all play important roles in a child's academic success in school. Some schools encourage a "three before first" policy which involves a student attending three years of preschool, including kindergarten, before first grade. A child entering first grade can postpone gratification, sit still and focus, work with symbols, and separate fantasy from reality. Sometimes, time itself can benefit children still developing particular areas at this age. Screening that involves pencil and paper work, visual matching and memory, auditory discrimination, memory and analysis, naming of letters, verbal and nonverbal reasoning, sequencing tasks, story recall, and math counting and pattern tasks can be used for grade placement and recommendations for students needing specific help.

While visual acuity is important for a healthy developing child, the visual system must be developed as well. Recognizing objects, distinguishing sizes and shapes, depth perception, color notations, and spatial awareness are all aspects of the visual system. Visual perception allows people to discriminate visual images, understand part to whole relationships, separate figures and backgrounds, understand spatial relationships, and attach meaning to visual images. A student with a strong visual memory may only need a couple of exposures to words for reading and spelling purposes. Intelligent students with weak visual perception and or memory skills can have difficulties in learning to read and write.

It is important to note that there is no research that confirms visual perceptual training and correlating exercises cure or assist with reading difficulties. The more methods a reader is taught to use, the better the reading ability. The part to whole approach, also known as phonics, teaches students to blend and decode words. While the whole word, or look say approach is the most efficient way to read, many students with poor visual memory can have a difficult time with this method. A whole to part, or structural analysis, approach teaches students to look for affixes and base words. Latin and Greek roots and stems are taught to assist students with these additional patterns of language. An inferential approach uses context clues, pictures, vocabulary, and inferencing as a combined effort in understanding texts.