How do students vary in ability and disability?

Students also differ in according to their special needs and talents. Some enter the world with exceptional abilities and talents others enter the world with different disabilities.

Students with disabilities are provided with special education and special services along with exceptional learners that teachers may encounter in classrooms, which are students that are one of the following:

1. physically handicap
2. mentally handicap
3. emotionally handicap
4. gifted and talented students

*Students with special needs are often referred to as handicapped or disabled, which is why it is important for all teachers to understand what those terms actually mean. As teachers you should never look or act differently around a child who has disability.

There are quite a few different disabilities that are possible to have:

• specific learning disability
• speech or language impairments
• mental retardation
• serious emotional disturbance
• hearing impairments
• orthopedic impairments
• visual impairments
• multiple disabilities
• deaf blindness
• autism and other

*Since the term learning disability was founded in the 1960's there has been no university accepted definition.

Teachers can help in the early identification of students with learning disabilities so that they can receive the instructional adaptions or special education services they need by being alert for students who exhibit several of the following academic and behavioral characteristics.

• inability to problem solve
• lack of engagement with learning tasks
• poor language and cognitive development
• lack of basic reading skills
• excessive movement
• impulsivity
• poor motor coordination
• poor motivation
• lack of attention during lectures or class discussion

How do students vary in intelligence?

Although many definitions of intelligence have been proposed, the term has yet to be completely defined. Some people believe that it is ones ability to learn, whereas others believe it is the way that they are taught.

Here are a few different perspectives on intelligence:

• It is adaptive-involves modifying and adjusting ones behavior to accomplish a new task.
• learning ability-different people learn different ways and some learn more quickly than others.
• use of prior knowledge- students ways of analyzing and understanding new situations effectively.
• different thinking and reasoning processes-involves more complex interaction and coordination.
• culture specific-different cultures are not as intelligent as other cultures.

Intelligence testing: intelligent testing are something that every student does at a young age which varies from three years old to five years old depending on the child. These certain tests are valued by psycologists and those in the field of special education because they can be helpful in diagnosing a students strengths and weaknesses.
Though these tests are still being given they are constantly criticized due to culturally biased scores.

Learning Styles: the approaches to learning that works best for them, these are sometimes been called learning style preferences or cognitive styles. There are certain students who learn different ways than others and their are many different types of learning styles. For example students could learn in the following environments depending on their type of learning style:

• silence
• noisy, active environments
• formal settings
• relaxed environments
• following logical sequence, structure

*There is no correct view of learning styles to guide teachers in their daily decision making.