Meeting the needs of gifted and talented children with dyslexia

Meeting the needs of gifted and talented children with dyslexia

Introduction

Children who are gifted and also have learning disabilities are those who possess a distinguished gift or talent and are capable of high performance , but who also have a learning disability that makes some aspect of academic achievement hard . Some of these children are identified and their needs are met . This occurs only rarely , however unless a school especially decides to identify and then serve these children

When teachers first began describing children who showed evidence of having dyslexia

yet also appeared to be gifted , many thought of this as discrepancy . Many people have difficulty understanding that a child can be gifted and also have learning disabilities . The stereotype that had prevailed since Terman 's (Silverman 2003 ) time was that gifted children score uniformly high on intelligence tests and do well in school . How could a child be considered gifted who has serious enough learning problems to be characterized as having evidence of dyslexia ? As a result , children with dyslexia with both their high abilities and their learning problems are rarely identified and are often poorly served

In recent years , the idea of giftedness and learning disabilities occurring unitedly in the same person has become commonly accepted . Some books have been written on the subject , many articles have been published in journals , and most educational conferences concentrating on either learning disabilities or giftedness comprise at least one presentation on the dual exceptionality . During the last decade , growing attention has been being also given to the confusing question of high ability students with dyslexia . The learning of these disabled gifted and talented children needs remediation activities . At the same time they also require opportunities to promote their own individual strengths and gifts in one or more fields in which they have previously showed their superior abilities

Identification of gifted and talented children with dyslexia

Due to various definitions of giftedness , problems in identifying children with dyslexia arise . Generally , gifted children with dyslexia are those who meet the eligibility criteria for both giftedness and learning disabilities . Dyslexic children are easily identified as gifted because of high achievement or high IQ scores (Hannah Shore , 1995 They may build fantastic structures with plastic bricks or start a local campaign to save the whales . The creative abilities , intellectual soundness and passion they bring to their hobbies are clear pointers of their potential for giftedness (Winebrenner 2002 . These children may impress teachers with their verbal abilities , while their spelling or handwriting contradicts the image . At times , they may be forgetful careless and disorganized

Giftedness usually belongs to high intellectual abilities or potential rather than students ' specific progresses . Gifted children are usually characterised as having exceptional abilities or potential for learning and problem solving . Dyslexic disabilities are defined as problems in learning due to a cognitive-processing difficulty in which the dysfunction influences one or more cognitive processes instead of obstructing overall intellectual ability . These disabilities are constantly identified by an inconsistency between their measured potential and...