Learning Support

Students can receive learning support services if they are identified with a specific learning disability or as mentally retarded as defined below:

Chapter 14 Regulations defines Specific Learning Disability as:

1. General. The term means a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations, including conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia.

2. Disorders not included. The term does not include learning problems that are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities, of mental retardation, of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.

   Mental Retardation means significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning, existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior and manifested during the developmental period that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.

The special education teacher assists the regular education classroom teacher in adapting materials, modifying the curriculum, and utilizing instructional strategies within the regular classroom to enable a student to succeed. Depending upon the student’s need, support is offered either within the regular or learning support classrooms. Students often receive one on one or small group instruction. Research-based learning strategies are used to help students understand and learn new material or skills, integrate the new information into what they know in a way that makes sense, and recall the information or skill later. A strong emphasis is placed on teaching study skills, organization skills, and test taking strategies. As students become active learners they develop a more positive self image and social skills.