Hope for kids with learning difficulties

28 June 2016 - 09:10 By POPPY LOUW

Early identification and intervention could help prevent children with learning difficulties from falling behind before it is too late.This was the sentiment of experts at an education conference on dyscalculia and the interaction of dyslexia with mathematics, hosted by resource centre Bellavista Share in Sandton last week.British special-needs expert Sarah Wedderburn said failing to intervene while children were still young could have a negative effect on the rest of their lives.In South Africa Helen Arkell, an organisation working to address dyslexia, estimates that one in 10 people is dyslexic.If this estimate is accurate, at least 5 million South Africans are struggling with literacy problems in school or in the workplace.But Wedderburn said teachers were skilled enough to tell when pupils were failing and needed to strategise with department heads on helping struggling children."Maths is cumulative - it is based on everything that happened before. So if you wait until children are 10, they have already missed five years of maths teaching."Pupils with dyscalculia generally have weak working memories. Their ability to mentally hold numbers and manipulate them is [impaired]. It takes them longer to work out problems," she said.Dyscalculia is a disorder that makes learning or comprehending arithmetic difficult, while dyslexia is a disorder that makes reading and understanding written language difficult.Dr Stephanie Gottwald, assistant director at Tufts University's Centre for Reading and Language Research in the US, said dyscalculia often prevented children from moving beyond Grade 7 maths.Gottwald said children with these learning difficulties were slower at basic tasks and often paid little attention to their teachers' explanations ...

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