Social Skills and Language Arts

Having a disability or delay in either reading or writing can affect social skills because both reading and writing are used to communicate ideas to others. Having a problem in these areas may carry into social relationships because these methods of communication become important to children as they learn them. If every child can read and write to their peers, then a student who can not will feel left out, not part of the group. This can affect self-confidence and self-esteem causing the child who is left out to not try to reach out to other children.
I have seen this in classrooms and when i was in school myself. Children who are slower in reading and writing have a harder time expressing themselves and other students grow tired of waiting for them. They understand the reading or completed the writing assignment ten minutes ago and do not understand why the slower child is taking longer. From what i remember in school, the children that were slower readers were always assigned to the same reading group so the faster readers could get their assignments done faster. We all knew they were slower so when groups were mixed up for other subjects that may involve some reading/writing we did not want certain people in our group because we would have to wait for them or just do all the work. I've been in many groups where it was obvious that i was supposed to guide the other group members and i hated it.
For a teacher, this concern needs to be addressed because reading/writing are important skills students need to succeed in today's world. Although these skills should be taught because of the necessity, teachers should look at the child's social skills and perhaps give suggestions of what they could do to get some of their classmates' attention. School is a social time for students too and every student should have the skills to talk to other children. These relationships are too important not to address the social skills necessary for students to form them.