Erin+Pinckney

Nonverbal Learning Disorder

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Students with Nonverbal Learning Disorder (NLD) are highly verbal, their areas of deficit being in the nonverbal domains. Students with NLD have weak psychomotor and perceptual motor skills, deficiency in arithmetic, difficult with novel and complex tasks, poor problem solving skills, social and interpersonal deficits, and psychosocial adjustment problems. These students are highly verbal, so typical diagnostic and summative assessments will not allow these students to show their full potential.

Some ideas for Diagnostic Assessments are: English/science/history - Have a discussion with the student about the topic to determine how much they already know and what they need to work on. They are highly verbal and will have an easier time explaining themselves verbally rather than on a written test. Math - Math is very hard for NLD students and in order for them to succeed it must be concrete for them. A diagnostic (or any assessment for that matter) can be explained to them (verbally) in a real life way that they can connect to.

Progress Monitoring Informal Formative Assessments: In any subject area verbal question and answer assessments work well for this type of student. Performance based taks that are concrete with explictly verbally explained instructions and expectations also work. NLD students are usually shy and scared of doing things in front of the whole class or in groups where they are not comfortable, so this must also be taken into account when giving formative assessments.

Formal Formative/Summative Assessments: Pencil and Paper tests are very difficult for NLD students. Giving them the assessments verbally is a much better alternative. They also struggle with writing, so allowing them to type their answers is better if possible. In math class it is good to give them graph paper so that they can better organize their work. Allowing them to use a calculator for simple arithmetic can help them to stay on par with their peers as well, because while they might be able to do the more complex problem they struggle with staying organized and completing the work on the paper. They can usually tell you the answer out loud (example if you asked them verbally what 9 + 7 they could tell you the answer is 16) but doing it on the paper is extremely difficult. Allowing them to use a calculator is a good option because they do understand conceptually how to do the arithmetic. Mnemonic devices are perfect tools to teach NLD, especially with math, so allowing them the freedom to talk out loud to themselves during the assessments is greatly beneficial to these students.

Ways assessment data would determine how well the curriculum was planned and learned by the NLD student: Frequent verbal formative assessment is key with NLD students. This is the best opportunity for teachers to see how well the NLD student is learning the content. If they are unable to verbally answer the question, then it is obvious that the lessons are not working with this student. The progress made on formal formative assessments and summative assessments will also show you how well the NLD student is progressing. Although they may need to work harder to complete the work correctly and neatly, they should also be learning to do this. They should start to train themselves to do the math work, with helpful tools like graph paper, calculators, and mnemonic devices.