"Two roads diverged in woods, But I chose the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference" .
Remediation Center
Every person is unique in this world and so is every child. Our education system sometimes is not sufficient to assess a child.
Our education system is seen to have a very limited ways of assessing a child's abilities and intelligence.
Dhruv Academy runs
a remediation center for such students.
Different types of teaching techniques along with different games are used in the one
to one remedial sessions. Theses one to one sessions yield best results as the child gets the complete attention of her/his
remedial teacher.
India's tradition in education was 'Gurukul System'. No discrimination was made between the students and every student
was required to do some work. Krisna, Sudama, Pendya learned together though they had different abilities, capacities
and strengths for learning. If five fingers of a hand are considered as 'Pandav', every finger of hand having different capacity but
when they work united, the total strength increases a lot. This was the INDIAN approach to towards education.
During British regime, they changed the approach to suit their interest and it affected the basic Indian thought behind education.
In the 'Bigrite Matriculate' system (KG to 10th), the approach was on all Inclusive and integrated development of the students.
In the changed scenario, however, the marks obtained by a student have become indicators to decide his/her talent.
The all-inclusive option is lost. The effects on the students are seen but nobody cares about the causes behind it. The approach of
the school management started changing to such extent that those students whom they feel are not fit to sit and learn with other
students, the management forces their parents to change the school. When actual causes behind the academic failure are not
traced, a child with good intellectual capacities might get suspended from the school and his talent and skills might get suppressed.
Nobody takes pain to understand the effects on the children due to the changes in the family structure and life style.
It is true that awareness in parents is increasing but it does not mean that a child with special needs necessarily be sent to
special schools. Failure and misinterpretation is causing emotional stress. Hence there is a need to imbibe a thought in the
society at large that if a child is fit intellectually, he must get opportunity to be in the main stream of education. Still there are
children who require different school infrastructure and settings, teachers with specialized training to enhance their capacities
and develop skills (e.g mentally challenged children, physically challenged etc.)
With this object in mind we introduced a concept of running a center under the roof of the school itself,
for children who need one to one remediation or counselling. Two sessions in a week are sufficient for each child.
Issues in identification
• Symptoms which are mentioned above like poor punctuation, not reading properly, low self-image, spelling mistakes,
low academic performance, inattention etc can appear in many children at some point in their life.
• Children who show such symptoms can be misdiagnosed for having specific learning disability or borderline intelligence.
Academic difficulties or lower academic performance can occur due to various factors other than learning disability or
borderline intelligence like family problem, low exposure, lack of motivation etc. For an example, a child who is not well exposed
to English language can show poor spellings, low vocabulary, mispronunciation which is similar to symptoms of dyslexia.
But it is not appropriate make diagnosis just on the basis of these symptoms.
• When these symptoms are observed in the child, it is very important not to make hasty judgment or "label" the child as
having particular learning disability.
Following steps should be followed before making any diagnosis (Lerner, 1971).
1. Teachers should make alert and continuous observation of child's academic performance and behavior in the class
over a period of time.
2. Teachers can conduct informal tests to evaluate child's various skills and can analyses how child performs and learns.
3. Teachers should review child's achievement over a period of time.
4. Parental interview should be conducted in which information about child's family background, medical history, and
birth history, important life events should be gathered.
5. Child should be subjected for formal assessment of intelligence.
6. Why child is having academic difficulty should be explored
One fact should be clarified that, all the above mentioned disabilities are not due to any problems regarding the intelligence
of the child. It is just that the child is unable to fit herself or himself in the limited assessment techniques
of our education system.
It is very commonly seen that many teachers are not able to detect the exact problem of such children and it is difficult to
give special attention to such children in the class of 60 students. The child therefore faces many failures in the
school and so starts losing interest in studying.
Hence, with different techniques of teaching the child is helped out in understanding the basic concepts. The child is
given sufficient time as well as rehearsals of the concepts taught. It becomes much more easy and simple for the
child and ultimately the child blossoms!
Types of Specific Learning Disability
There are many types of specific learning disability. Some of them are as below :
1. Dyslexia :
• Reading achievement, as measured by individually administered standardized tests of reading accuracy or comprehension, is substantially below that expected given the person's chronological age, measured intelligence, and age-appropriate education.
• Problems with pronunciation. (Joo/Zoo)
• Problems with rhyming words and learning rhymes.
• Difficulty with learning shapes, colors and how to write their own name.
• Difficulty with retelling a story in the right order of events.
• Tries to avoid reading aloud in class and does not like reading books.
• Reversing whole word/syllable/letters (b/d, u/n, w/m, now/won,cat/tac)
• Bad spelling, including different misspellings of the same word in one writing assignment.
2. Dycalculia
• When writing, reading and recalling numbers, these common mistakes are made: number additions, substitutions, transpositions, omissions, and reversals.
• Inability to grasp and remember math concepts, rules, formulas, sequence (order of operations), and basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts.
• Difficulty keeping score during games or difficulty remembering how to keep score in games, like bowling, etc. Often looses track of whose turn it is during games, like cards and board games. Limited strategic planning ability for games, like chess.
• Difficulty in dealing with concepts in music
• Difficulty in money transactions.
• Difficulty in dealing abstract concepts of time and direction.
4. SLOW LEARNERS
• The lower end of the "Bell Curve"
• Not performing at grade level
• 75% of their peers achieve at a faster rate
• Measured mental abilities fall between 70 – 85
• Prone to be immature in interpersonal relationships
• Have difficulties following multi-step directions
• Do not develop long term goals
• Tend to live in the present only
• Tend to have a poor self-image due to awareness
that they don't keep up
• Work on all tasks slowly but can be methodical
• Do not have strategies for problem solving or decision making
• They do well with manipulative or hands-on tasks
3. Dysgraphia :
• A writing disability in which a person finds it hard
to form letters or write within a defined space.
• Slow or labored copying or writing - even if it is
neat and legible
• Content which does not reflect the student's other
language skills
• Generally illegible writing (despite appropriate
time and
attention given the task)
• Inconsistencies: mixtures of print and cursive, upper
and lowercase, or irregular sizes, shapes,
or slant of letters
• Unfinished words or letters, omitted words
• Inconsistent position on page with respect to
lines and margins.
• Inconsistent spaces between words and letters
• Cramped or unusual grip, especially:
Dhruv's Methodology
Assessment
Design Individual Education Plan (IEP)
Actual Sessions
Evaluation
Reports
Counselling with parents & Teachers
When the child is referred to us by school or parents, we follow certain steps before designing the strategies to deal with the child's problem. These steps are as follow:
.
1 Assessment :
Informal assessment:
informal assessment includes the conduction of various types of activities to measure different skills and abilities such as reading perception, auditory perception, attention span, eye-hand coordination, reading comprehension etc. For an example, the child is given a task like sorting of beads to measure its attention and motor skills.
It is also observed how child is holding pencil and its grip is also checked. We record observations about different areas through some play activities like catching the ball, throwing dart, walking on the straight line, jumping etc. These activities are developed by counsellor to help to establish rough profile of child's strengths and weaknesses.
2 Counselling :
Counselling is the integral part of process of remedial teaching. After the assessment, a parents counselling session is conducted.
In this session, all the observations collected through assessment are shared with the parents. If the child has undergone the standardized testing, the reports of the testing are explained to the parents. The session mainly focuses on educating the parents about child's problem and helping them to accept it. In this session, parent's doubts about child's problem are clarified.
3) Development of Individual Education Plan (IEP) :
After identifying the exact problem, the child's individual education plan (IEP) is developed. Individual Education Plan involves defining the content the child would learn in specific period of time (generally 2 months) and the methods of teaching.
In this process, small achievable and time bound goals are set and the larger goal is broken into the smaller goals.
4 Designing the sessions :
Sessions focus on mainly two areas:
i) Academics :
Child learns the content mentioned in the IEP through various methods such as worksheets, educational games, audio-visual aids etc. In the process, child's learning style is also identified and it is used to teach the various topics.
ii) Skills :
Child is taught skills which would help it in his academics and to live life in better way. It involves linguistic skills, thinking skills, motor skills, social skills, daily living skills etc. These skills are taught through various activities.
iii) Working on the psychological factors
What is Counselling ?
• Counselling includes one on one discussion regarding all tests and its interpretations. It also includes suggestions regarding different suitable options for best careers depending on the abilities. Counsellor will help to take a decision of appropriate career.
Dhruv Academy
A-66, Anandi Building, Late Dhomkar road,
Sahakar Nagar, Pune, Maharashtra 411009
8275066628
Career Guidance
Remediation Center
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