This speech offers a guide to identifying and teaching high-risk children, those who exhibit a lag in development severe enough to be a handicap in learning. The high-risk children focused on are those whose developmental lag is frequently not recognized until they fail in school. The two major areas of neurodevelopmental learning disorders are in perceptual-motor development and language development. Specific instruments useful for identifying high-risk children in early childhood are listed. Teacher indicators of deficiencies in both major areas are listed. Before intervention can be successful, teachers must be able to assess developmental levels of motor and language skills. A curriculum model based on concept development is presented. It assumes that perception is the basis of learning and uses the sensory systems to develop conceptual understandings. A concept, such as apples or sharing, is selected, and the classification and relational concepts related to it are identified. The major areas of conceptual development are properties, position, opposites, quantification, comparisons, associations, time, and motion. Expected outcomes in such areas as auditory and visual perception, reading readiness, gross motor development, and writing are described. References are provided. [Filmed from best available copy.] (KM)