Specific Learning Disability Education Essay Research

Spatial Awareness Deficit
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
SPATIAL AWARENESS DEFICIT
Characteristics of Spatial Awareness Deficit
Spatial awareness deficit entails the challenges of being conscious of the environment and its relativity and remarked difficulty in learning language, reading, and doing math. There is a range of features that defined the presence of spatial awareness deficits, and they include difficulties in pinpointing localities, difficulties in navigating environments, inability to gauge distance while walking or driving, trouble in following routes or reading maps, poor coordination, and impaired recognition of personal space. Besides, such a person expresses difficulties in reading, writing, or doing math.
Impact on Learning
Spatial awareness deficit disability impacts negatively on learning. Children having spatial awareness deficit disabilities require visual-spatial processing skills that allow them to read maps, read, solve a math problem, and to follow dance moves. They also need enhanced skills to get meaning out of letters and numbers. Since the approximation ability of distance and space is impaired, these children will need more engagements in visual-spatial processing that would allow them to properly estimate distance, visual spaces and be able to engage more effectively on activities that require coordination.
Methods to Differentiate Instruction
Everyone has a unique set of abilities and shortcomings in learning processes. This variation demonstrates the need for different learning styles that suit each learner. It means that instructions should be differentiated to align with learners’ needs. There is no universal method of learning that rhymes with learners ‘requirements or abilities. Learners tend to express the varying level of abilities when methods of instruction are implemented.
Spatial awareness deficit disability impacts on learning abilities of students. Thus, this affects their ability to grasp learning content during instruction. As a result, the learning methodology should be altered to suit learners' needs by considering their inadequacies in learning as occasioned by challenges such as spatial awareness deficit disability. This situation defines conditions that differentiate instructions are required.  Tomlinson defines differentiated instruction as factoring students' learning styles, levels of readiness, and students’ needs in the contemporary inclusive educational settings (Büyüksoy, Taşcıoğlu & Ergin, 2020). The author suggests that learning abilities, needs, and readiness should be examined before designing a lesson plan. Thus, differentiated instruction is one of the approaches to implementing learning that takes care of all types of learners, including those with special needs and disabilities like spatial awareness deficit. Lesson plans are designed in a way that favorable measures up to students’ ability. Tomlinson lists four ways in which instructions can be differentiated, and these methods include content, process, product, and learning environment.
More often, content is prescribed by jurisdiction and authorities' educational standards. An instructor may not alter the content but can differentiate the content by classifying content to be learned. This categorization of learning content is based on students' abilities, including cognitive skills and motor skills. The instructors can apply the six levels of the differentiated model of learning in the context of the content concept. These levels include abilities to remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create. For example, the learners who express a higher capacity of ability and mastery of content may be a focus on activities that relate to creating and analyzing content. The ones with impaired learning capacity, like the learners affected with spatial awareness deficit disability, may need to concentrate on remembering and understanding the contents before progressing to more advanced levels of learning such as analysis, application, and creation.
The process, as espoused in differentiated instruction, revolves around the preferred method of learning. The gist of the process directs the instructor to deliver learning material though appropriate styles that match learners' abilities. The learning process is implemented in differentiated instructions as guided by visual, auditory, and kinesthetic abilities of the learning. The instructors are expected to support each student according to their needs. Students will gain optimal learning if learning processes are tailored to their individual needs. Examples of activities that enhance differentiated instruction in the process inc...