Profile of a Typical CAS Student
The CAS student is a child of average or well above average intelligence who has demonstrated difficulties in the acquisition of language skills (such as listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, or mathematical skills). His or her school experience traditionally results in failure, frustration and low self-esteem. The National Institute of Child and Human Development and the Center for Learning Disabilities have confirmed that dyslexia affects one in five children in the United States and it is the number one cause of illiteracy and school drop-out in the nation.
About Our Students
Many students with language-processing difficulties, such as dyslexia often struggle with:
- writing
- spelling
- reading
- translating speech into writing
- memory
- concentration
Many of our students have unusual creativity and intellectual power. These attributes are accompanied by insight, knowledge, humor, curiosity and originality. Many of our students, through proper intervention and family support, become superior artists, architects, photographers, poets, athletes, engineers and entrepreneurs who use divergent thinking, heightened perception and creative problem-solving to achieve success.
Unfortunately, there are many children with language-process difficulties who may never experience the gifts they were born with because they are repressed, frustrated and defeated by the teaching practices and materials in most of today's classrooms. The toll on individuals, families and upon society is huge.
Early identification and intervention is probably the most important factor in fostering the motivation and perseverance necessary for a successful educational career.
Strengths and Talents of Learners with Language Processing Difficulties
Students frequently show combinations of the following traits. Singly and in combination, these qualities are both bane and blessing in that while they invigorate learning, they may also create friction in traditional school settings.
- Bright, divergent thinking
- Can see things from several different points of view
- Enjoy exploring questions which have no verifiable answers
- Often think outside the box
- Creative and imaginative
- Often excel in art, architecture, drama, engineering, music and athletics
- Imaginative, as exhibited in creative writing and poetry
- Curious
- Questions "Why?" "How come?" and "What if?"
- Curiosity often springs from three-dimensional thinking and hands-on exploration
- Rapid grasp of concepts
- Awareness of patterns
- Alert to patterns, symmetry in nature, architecture and art
- Alert to patterns of interval and repetition in music and math (but doesn't recognize patterns in spelling)
- Intellectual energy
- Intellectual concentration for long periods
- May have exceptional experiential and emotional memory
- Empathy
- Heightened perceptions
1. Priscilla Vail, Gifts, Talents and The Dyslexias: Wellsprings, Sringboards and Finding Foley’s Rocks, Annals of Dyslexia, Vol. 40, 1990.
Possible Areas of Difficulty for Students with Language-Based Learning Differences
- Reading
- Slow reader
- Skips over words or line (tracking difficulties)
- Reads literally instead of in context ("There's a fork in the road.")
- Reads out of sequence; reverses the order of words
- Often mistakes one word for another (for/from, to/of)
- Difficulty with comprehension
- Avoids reading whenever possible
- Difficulty reading out loud
- Paper-writing difficulties
- Difficulty making letter formations; inconsistent sizes; difficulty recalling written letter patterns
- Difficulty with pencil grip
- Poor spatial organization; script often illegible (dysgraphia)
- Difficulty using cursive (prefers printing)
- Difficulty organizing thoughts on paper; avoids writing or writes short sentences and paragraphs
- Difficulty in translating oral speech into written
- Take an unusually long time to complete writing assignments
- Spelling
- Poor speller; difficulty recalling letters, and sequence of letters in words from his or her long-term visual memory
- Reverses letters or order of letters (was/saw, bolck/block)
- Unable to spell common, everyday words
- Can spell a word one moment and then misspells later
- Speech
- Difficulty in pronouncing words
- Difficulty getting a point across on first try
- Stutters; delays an answer by coughing or sneezing
- Hesitancy in speech
- Memory
- Difficulty recalling names of things in conversation; frequent use of "whatchamacallit" or "this" or "that"
- Difficulty with retention of common-knowledge items such as place names, days of the week, timetables, or factual data
- Constantly misplaces, loses or forgets things
- Concentration
- Marked difficulty in concentrating when in a noisy environment
- Easily distracted; difficulty in focusing attention
- Difficulty performing two activities at the same time (reading while eating)
- Directionality/sequencing
- Difficulty with geographic directionality (north/south, left/right, ahead/behind)
- Difficulty remembering direction when forming letters
- Difficulty remembering which way to work a math problem
- Trouble remembering the sequence of syllables in words
- Testing
- Unable to complete test in allotted time although material was studied and well understood
- Blanks out or freezes during tests
- Difficulty in narrowing down multiple-choice questions
- Interprets questions/directions differently than intended
- Difficulty transferring answers to a score sheet
- Psychological barriers
- Frustrated by attempts to read, write, spell or speak correctly
- Feels isolated; fear of not being understood
- Feels dumb or stupid because of difficulties doing tasks which are easy for others
- Possible difficulty with social interactions such as communication, understanding the subtleties of language, low self-esteem and feeling rejected