My Experience of Teaching Children With Math Disability or Dyscalculia

7/29/2019 My Experience of Teaching Children With Math Disability or Dyscalculia

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My experience of teaching children

with math disability or dyscalculia

Frank Ho

Ho Math Chess Learning Centre

Vancouver, Canada

www.mathandchess.com

January, 2013

A few years back, I started to teach some children as young as 4or 5 years old and then I noticed that some of the seem to have

tremendous difficulties in doing math when compared to their

similar age group of children. I started to do some researchesand then found out some of them having the signs of dyscalculia.

I compared the problems they encountered to the reported

symptoms described in the research papers and found the

descriptions in most of the research papers published so far were

not detailed enough and also no remediation worksheets were

suggested. I had headaches in teaching these dyscalculiachildren, so I started to document their problems and how Itacked their problems and also then I was interested in finding a

way to help these struggling children and their frustratedparents. I made progresses and also have gained many insights in

teaching these children and also produced a workbook based on

my teaching experiences with those dyscalculia children to helppre-k and kindergarten children to overcome their math learning

problems.

This article is to summarize all of the last 4 years of teachingexperience of dyscalculia children by reporting my observations

and also offer some suggestions on how to help them. To help

parents or educators understand dyscalculia, I feel we must


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understand what is dyscalculia and what sings might tell us if a

child has dyscalculia, and the most important is .what we can doabout it.

What is dyscalculia?

There are many different views on how dyscalculia shall bedefined. A neuroscientist might define it from the scanning result

of a childs brain, a psychologist might define it from the result

of psychometric test, and a math educator might define it as a

result of a math ability test. Most parents would think theproblem of not meeting an expected level is not a problem

because their children are too young.

As a math educator, my interest is to observe and to find out

what I can do about it.

When can dyscalculia happen?

Some children may experience dyscalculia as young as 4 or 5

years old or even younger. They had experienced tremendousdifficulties in learning meth and it was a challenge for me also to

teach them. Dyscalculia could also persist to older children like

grade 7 and after this, the symptoms start to appearunnoticeable to parents since they are allowed to use calculators

but could be detected by very experienced math tutors bywatching and examining their calculation steps, the most trouble

area is when they have to do calculations backward such as

finding factors or square root when a calculator is not allowed.Another sign is they never seem to be able to keep or get A

regardless how much effort the math tutor has put in. This groupof children has more trouble in solving word problems although

their computational skills may be alright.


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Symptoms of dyscalculia

Some signs of dyscalculia or math disabilities are as follows:

1. Writing

Some dyscalculia children have problems in writing correct

numbers and counting numbers so right from the start they

already experience difficulties before getting into computations

such as simple additions or subtractions.

They cannot distinguish curve and straight lines when writingnumbers. For example some children are confused about 2 and 3

because they are not sure if 2 has one half circle or two halves ofa circle.

2. Reciting and Counting.

They cannot recite numbers fluently forward and can only recite

from number 1. They cannot count backwards from 10 to 1correctly or correctly saying the correct words.

Even they can do 1 + 1 is 2 and all the sudden a few minutes later,they might give the incorrect answer 1 + 1 = 1. They only

understand when objects are used when doing additions and when

the objects are removed then they may have problems to getcorrect answers. So by observing them, I feel that it is very

important we train them in reasoning and try to get them tounderstand the reasons behind all answers.


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3. Logic and pattern

They have difficulties in identifying patterns and the pattern

concept almost does not exist to them. Any number or objectswhich require some logic will be very difficult for them. They

could not understand even after being taught, so their ability ofunderstanding logic is not high.

4. Retention and review

It is not really their ability of 'can do' or 'cannot do' worries me

but the way they solve the problems worries me. They can do wellafter repetitive instructions and practices but just a few days

later, they would suddenly act in such a way that they seemed tohave never learned before. They do not seem to have any

retention. Also once they think something is right then despitemy teaching, they are unable to change their thinking. For

example, after I pointed out that 5 is correct way of writing andI asked some of them to write and trace it 25 times but at end

they still wrote the wrong way.

5. Reasoning

When not doing math, some of them may be very talkative, but allthe sudden they are very quiet when doing math and normallycannot give reasons on their own errors because they are very

confused themselves.


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Even they know the answer of 5 + 5 = 10; they do not know what 5

+ 6 is when asked.

6. Response time

They reply slower than non-dyscalculia children and need moretime to get any answers. The do not seem to be able to recall

information been taught to them even a few minutes ago.

7. Mental math ability

Their mental math ability is weak and need to use fingers tophysically count each number to get answers. They need to

physically see and count in order to get answers. They cannoteasily transfer the learning from counting to calculating in their

brain easily. Sometimes, they feel they do not have enoughfingers to do math when going to grade 4. They do not have the

innate to understand number sense.

They do not like repetitive practices despite the fact that theycould not do them in speedy way and complained they are boringwhen asked to do.

What can math educators and parents do to help

In most school math teaching, dots, fingers, beans are often usedas manipulative for sequential forward or backward counting for

teaching addition or subtraction; children will have problems withthis kind of technique since they do not get the idea of part1 +

part2 = whole. So when doing reverse of addition (subtraction), itwill be difficult for some children. They were taught to count,

skip counting using dots or fingers but were not encouraged to

learn (or did sufficiently enough worksheets) on how to add by


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relationships, logic, and by comparisons etc. methods. They need

to be taught on how to use "methods" to do additions orsubtractions, not mainly by counting.

It is important for parents to understand when a child is behind

then it is more important to build the foundations instead oftrying to catch up with the current school work. For example, if a

child is learning Times Table but could not do carry-over addition

or subtractions at grade 3 then it is more important for the child

to learn addition or subtraction in fluency before mastering the

Times Tables. Try to catch up in the summer to learn Times

Tables will be a better idea.

Parents play an important supervisor role and shall monitor theirchildren's progress at home and make sure they do homework.

Without doing homework, the progress is slow.

Parents also need to encourage their children to work harder andwilling to take on new challenges, for example new worksheets or

do some extra math work which they never learned at dayschools.

Parents shall encourage their children to think and also dosomething which may not be their preferred thing to do like

working on math word problems.

Ho Math Chess workbook integrate puzzles and chess into math

workbooks, so with this innovative idea and invention, we hopethat it will not be bored for children to work on and will be more

fun for them when compared to the traditional math worksheets.

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My Experience of Teaching Children With Math Disability or Dyscalculia