Learning disability; It is the difficulty in one or more of the reading, writing, speaking and arithmetic skills in a normal or gifted individual who has a brain injury or not, who has problems in academic skills. Learning disabilities were included in the special education category in the United States in 1975.
Although it is believed that the cause of learning disability is due to the function of the brain and four factors, a definite cause is not known yet. These four factors are; organic, genetic, environmental causes and biochemical disorders.
Students with learning disabilities constitute the largest area in special education. 50.5% of children in need of special education are classified as learning disabilities. School-age students with learning disabilities constitute 4.5%.
Students with learning disabilities are most likely to have failures in reading, reading comprehension, writing and mathematics. In addition, problems can be seen in areas such as motivation, poor social skills, language, attention and perception.
As a result of the researches, it was concluded that two teaching methods can be effective. These methods are; direct instruction method and cognitive strategy instruction. Direct teaching method; It is a gradual method in which the responsibility of teaching begins with the teacher and is transferred to the student, which involves presenting the topics in small steps, followed by frequent checks in order to determine how much students benefit from their presentations. Cognitive strategy teaching is effective in teaching complex academic skills such as reading comprehension and written expression, and solving mathematical problems. There are some instructional elements in this strategy. These; providing supporters, providing reminders to remember the strategy steps, giving place to interactive dialogues and developing metacognitive knowledge.
In primary education, there should be instructional arrangements for students with learning disabilities. There are effective instructional arrangements and approaches to be applied in the fields of primary literacy, reading comprehension, writing, mathematics teaching and Life Sciences, Science and Social Studies.