Some Information

Where I work we have a few kids who have visual/auditory perception issues. I've realized that a lot of people and teachers have no idea what I'm talking about when I say these words.

Basically, visual and auditory processing disorder can come by themselves or together as a team. Visual processing disorder is often misdiagnosed as dyslexia. Students tend to write or read numbers and/or letters backwards. They don't always write with regards to the lines on the paper (margins or otherwise). They can seem ADD or ADHD because of their doodling or tendency to write all over the paper. The technical end of it is that the information that is being seen by the eyes is not passing through the brain correctly. Instead of the student being able to see every letter in its entirety a student may see the sentence look like this: "Whr I wrk w hve a fw kd wh hae visl/adtry prcepon isue." They may also see have the letters; for example an upper case E may look like uppercase F and lowercase e may look like c to them. This is why when they read and write letters may get jumbled and words may not be read in their entirety. These students also tend to skip lines when they read in order to get through the work faster. They do this so that less attention can be drawn on their reading.

Auditory processing disorder is often misdiagnosed as ADHD. These children stare off into space, draw on paper, may get up and move around a lot, and spend a lot of time confused over directions that were given orally. These children suffer from a lack of connection from brain to ear and back again. They may only hear parts of sentences (similar to a child with VPD who may only read parts of sentences and words) and the often run into things when they walk. They are considered clumsy because they miss directions and lack fine motor skills. These students will often act like the class clown so that they don't get noticed for "not listening" when in fact they aren't hearing properlly.

There are very easy ways for students to learn to live with Auditory and Visual Processing Disorder. Often they are just easy fixes in the classroom, such as moving the student closer to the front of the classroom so that they can focus on the teacher's lips as the move and giving the student bolder colored lines on a paper. It may mean a slightly bigger font or a highlighter that changes white to hot pink. Most students can learn to cope easily with these disorders and they are not detrimental as long as they are noticed and evaluated.

Please feel free to message me or leave a comment if you have any questions!

Keep Teaching,
Lauren