Describes a new special education teacher's first year of teaching with 26 children, grades K-3, interweaving life skills with literacy skills. (SR)

This study examined differences between Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III) and Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) scores for 40 elementary students with learning disabilities. WISC-III Full Scale, Verbal, and Performance scores were lower than comparable WISC-R scores by one-third to one-half a…

Comparison of the ability of 74 children with and 19 children without learning disabilities (LD) at three age levels to identify expressions of emotions through facial, posture, and gesture cues found that LD children identified fewer emotions but did show some age progression. Some emotions were more readily identified than others. Most gender…

This article reviews research on the influence of affect on thoughts, cognition, and behavior of students with learning disabilities and finds that induced positive affect leads to more accurate performance on math, greater learning of new vocabulary, and better performance on new learning tasks. (Author/DB)

Forty-four university students, of whom 11 had learning disabilities (LD), were tested on tasks requiring multisyllabic pseudoword repetition, oral reading, memory for digits, and vocabulary. In both LD and non-LD groups, significant correlations were found between pseudoword repetition accuracy and reading, suggesting that poor readers also have…

Describes innovative, inclusive models for providing special education services for learning-disabled students developed by three universities and funded by the Office of Special Education. The projects, involving considerable financial and professional resources, were implemented at six restructuring elementary schools. Findings suggest that…

This article discusses using peer content-area tutoring and strategy instruction to help college students with learning disabilities become self-regulated learners. The instructional model addresses transferring strategies across settings, linking cognitive strategies to the content curriculum, guiding the student to independent strategy use, and…

The effectiveness of coaching active reasoning of students with learning disabilities was studied with 63 grade 4 and 5 students. Students in the coaching condition outperformed students in the two comparison conditions on immediate and one-week delayed tests of factual information and explanations. (Author/SW)

The development and implementation of portfolio assessment is presented, with considerations for the use of this approach with learning-disabled (LD) students. Research on the usefulness of portfolio assessment with students with LD is needed, as is teacher training. Also considered is the issue of technical adequacy whereby portfolio assessment…

This article describes the inclusion model implemented in one Washington elementary school and the educational experiences of two children, both with learning disabilities. The building-level model included the following components: university-based assistance, cooperative integrated reading and composition, cross-age tutoring, in-class specialist…

This article notes the failures of traditional deficit models of learning disabilities and considers, instead, possibilities of Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. It summarizes findings on talents of students labeled learning disabled, evidence of their abilities, implications of these for schools, and preliminary recommendations…

Ways to facilitate communication between parents and teachers of students with learning disabilities are discussed, along with communicating with culturally diverse parents. In addition, basic communication principles are addressed, including: being accepting, listening, asking the right questions, and providing encouragement. (SW)

In a study of social class influences on schooling, adolescents from high-income families and low-income families were interviewed about various aspects of special education. Responses indicated that lower income students had ambivalent or negative feelings about special education, whereas high-income students, with few exceptions, regarded…

The development of a positive relationship between a teacher and a sixth grader with a learning disability (LD) is described, based on interviews and observations over a school year. Insights that the teacher developed into education of LD students, based on the student's attitudes, family relationships, and earlier experiences, are offered. (SW)

This study evaluated a computer-assisted instructional program employing a constant time delay prompting procedure to teach spelling of abbreviations to four adolescents with mild learning disabilities. The program was found effective, and training generalized to hand-written performance in both a special and general education setting. (Author/DB)