Discalculia

[lewelma]

Please don't quote.

 

I'm considering tutoring a 13-year old girl who has discalculia.  She has been tested in reading and writing, and fell in the bottom 1% of all dyslexics.  I'm not sure of the stats on the math, but she was basically told not to bother trying to teach her daughter any math.  This is not a general IQ thing, as you would never know if you just met her in passing.  She is bright and articulate.

 

Her mom has told me that she can count, and does have one to one correspondence.  She can add and subtract small numbers using her fingers.  But any time they try to teach her more, she might get it over the period of 30 minutes, but she will completely forget it by the next day.  Surprisingly, the mother thinks that she can do word problems.  So things like "you have 30 pieces of pizza and 10 kids, how many pieces would each kid get? " Her mom thinks that if handed a calculator, that she would know what buttons to push to get the answer. 

 

Seems to me that she should stop trying to do the actual calculations and focus on word problems and calculator skills.  But I thought that there would be many of you that have BTDT who could give me advice.

 

See post 4 for more detail.

 

Thanks!

 

Ruth in NZ

[OneStepAtATime]

Hi Ruth!

 

I'm no expert but I do have a child that is dyscalculic.  Things that might help:

 

Run her through the Ronit Bird material if you can get access to it.  The electronic materials are apparently much easier than the printed books.  I only have the printed books.  Ronit Bird has dedicated her life to the study and remediation of dyscalculia.

 

You might, if you can get  a copy, read the book "My 13th Winter" by Samantha Abeel.  This won't really give insight in to specifics on how to teach your student but it might be an eye opener for how she is seeing/understanding math and might give you ideas on ways to support her.  Samantha is severely dyscalculic.  She is also gifted.  Her 13th year was when they got the diagnosis, I believe, thus the title of the book.  Excerpts from that book might be helpful to share with your student, too, since they are the same age.

http://www.amazon.com/My-Thirteenth-Winter-A-Memoir/dp/0439339057

 

My daughter is similar to Samantha in that she has little sense of the passage of time, basic measurement has been a huge struggle (although metric is making a lot more sense than Imperial), elapsed time is still not clicking, but while there was a time when she could not add without using her fingers and could not memorize a single multiplication fact, that is changing.  I took her back to the very basics of subitization skills thanks to recommendations on this board.  I did Ronit Bird activities and put her with a program called Dynamo Math.  Things started to click.  It has been slow, but starting over completely in math last year (7th grade) was the best thing we could have done.  Stuff has begun to make sense to her in ways that just weren't there before.  She had to start over completely, though, with basic subitization skills.  That was the huge missing component that should have been there from infancy and was not.

 

I realize that an 8th grader doing 3rd grade level math (which is where she is now) seems like a bad thing.  But starting over is giving her a chance to truly understand and function in the type of math she will need as an adult.  If that means it will take longer to get her to High School level materials and we have to delay graduation, so be it.  

 

She is moving through the CLE light units and it has been an excellent fit.  We started CLE this year, again at the recommendation of people on this board.  TONS of review which she absolutely has to have for anything to stick long term.  New material introduced in small stages.  Drilling only targeted facts each day.  Flash card practice is also only targeted drill of specific facts, not a mish mash of a ton of facts.  She is in the last third of CLE 300, and should be moving on to CLE 400 by the beginning of May, possibly sooner.  She will hopefully finish CLE 400 by Fall and move into CLE 500/600 for 9th grade.  Because there is so much review, I can frequently cut out some of the problems and compress two lessons into one.  We do math every single day but Sunday.  She gets overloaded, though, so sessions have to be fairly short, no more than 30-40 minutes.  Then we either play math games or do something more physical with math like cook (where she measures and adds).  Yesterday, though, things were really clicking so she actually voluntarily did 3 lessons and finished the light unit she was in.

 

But as a tutor, I could see parents not wanting their 13 year old starting over completely in math even though that might actually unlock more doors.

 

Are they remediating the dyslexia issues?  Do they have an OG system in place?  Word problems are going to be exceedingly tough if she can't read them.

 

 

[PeterPan]

Have you tried Hands-On Equations or some pre-algebra on her yet?  Her mom might be right.  My ds is quirky like that. I wouldn't do RB and *not* do the more abstract things.  Not that I've done what you're doing.  I'm just saying common sense says work on it with RB for 15 minutes (half, whatever) of the session then hand her a calculator and go into whatever she's mentally capable of doing.  She might even be able to do Patty Paper Geometry.  She might *benefit* from the hands-on of folding the paper and moving the math, kwim?  

[lewelma]

Please don't quote.

 

Thanks so much guys!  I will look up those resources. 

 

As for going back to the beginning, she never left the beginning.  I think they have been working on a 1st or 2nd grade curriculum for 5+ years. They just are not getting anywhere.  Her dyslexia is so severe that she started with 5 piece puzzles to develop *literacy* skills.  And yes, apparently the tutor is getting somewhere, and she is reading the basic Bob Books I think. But math is going absolutely no where.  I don't think she is anywhere in the range of prealgebra or Patty Paper Geometry.  I know she was tested at the bottom 1% of all *dyslexics*!  That is pretty low.  Sounds to me like it is similar in mathematics.  So I need *basic* material.  I think the subitizing is a great starting point.

 

If I were to evaluate her, what specific skills should I look for?

 

Ruth in NZ

[PeterPan]

If you need subitizing, RB Dots is what you want.  

[geodob]

Your example from the mother was interesting:

"you have 30 pieces of pizza and 10 kids, how many pieces would each kid get? " 

 

As well as in the bottom 1% of Dyslexics.

But then you say that 'this is not a general IQ thing'.

 

Though their is a small part of the brain, in the left temporal lobe.

That has 2 sides.

When you look at any 'letter', their is a connection between the visual symbol of the letter, and its sound.

Which also happens when you look at a symbol for a number.

 

The connection between the sound and the symbol, happens in the small part of the brain that I mentioned.

Where one side connects Letters, and the other side connects Numbers.

 

Though I've worked with a number of children, who have a 'disorder' with one or both sides.

So that they can't connect the sound of a letter and/or number, with their symbol.

 

With the '30 pieces of pizza and 10 kids', I would make a guess that she was given this verbally, rather reading it?

So that she can understand the spoken words: thirty and ten as numbers representing different quantities.

But not the symbols: 30 and 10 ?

 

Her use of fingers to add and subtract small numbers?

Also needs to considered, in terms of using the fingers as 'symbols' to represent numbers.

Where a fingers are felt as representing numbers.

 

Though I've written here about a method of 'finger counting', to count up to 99.

Where I would guess that you haven't taught her any method for 'finger counting'?

Which would limit her to small numbers.

 

But finger counting is a kinesthetic way of forming symbols, where the symbols are felt.

Which raises a question in regard to her Dyslexia?

Of the potential of her learning 'Sign Language'?

As a link between the written and spoken word?

[Heathermomster]

Geodob, you have suggested teaching the Soroban abacus in the past.  Could that scenario possibly apply here?

[Heathermomster]

Lewelma, have you seen the student's WISC-IV subtest scores?  I am curious to know whether she has a particular strength.    

[littleWMN]

My 13 year old daughter has dyscalculia. She has a higher than average IQ and is high school level on most areas of language arts, but in math she is about at a 3-4th grade level (in 8th grade). She's in private school now that is meeting her needs. But some helpful things we've done: calculator, multiplication charts, graph paper, and repetition, repetition, repetition.

[lewelma]

Please don't quote

 

Thanks everyone for the ideas. I have not seen any IQ tests for her but what I mean by not a general IQ thing is that she is a lovely, articulate girl who you would never know had these troubles.

 

As for the word problem, mom would have done it orally as the girl cannot read.

 

The mom is wondering what is a reasonable goal for her DD, as the tester basically said there was no reason to even try to teach her to read or do math, her scores were that bad.

 

Also, I'm not clear on what skills I should be looking for. I tutor a lot of kids but never one with this many learning disabilities. So I am at a bit of a loss. My guess is that she needs a specialised tutor but I doubt there are any here.

 

Thanks for your help.

[OneStepAtATime]

Unless she has had that verdict from more than one qualified assessor, I would not automatically believe what they have said about not even trying to teach her reading and math.  There are several posters on here who got bogus assessments the first time around (including me).  Yes, she probably needs a specialist, but if there isn't one anywhere near then you still might be able to help her.  And there are posters on here that tried many different things over several years to help their child and made little progress at all, until suddenly they found something that DID work.  One mom in particular had a son who couldn't even read his own name.  He spent a year on Barton Reading and Spelling (normally an EXCELLENT program for dyslexia remediation) with almost no progress at all.  She switched him to the High Noon program and he is now reading.  Until options have been exhausted, I would hope the parents would continue to try and assist her.  And in the meantime encourage lots of audio books/read alouds/exposure to real world math scenarios, etc.

 

If you decide to tutor her, I like OhE's idea.  Work 15 minutes every time you see her (and have her also do this at home) on basic subitization skills using Ronit Bird's materials, manipulatives, whatever.  Keep that consistent.  Even though you say she never left the beginning, 1st and 2nd grade work isn't the beginning.  Subitization skills are the beginning.  Those skills normally are already there, even as an infant, and develop further over time just from normal exposure.  Some kids have very weak skills or no skills in this area and they have to be explicitly taught, sometimes over a LOOOOOOOONG period of time, with lots of consistency and repetition and with lots of different materials.  

 

The rest of the time allow her to use a calculator/fill in a multiplication grid for her to use/etc. and work on conceptual understanding.

 

IMHO, there is no way to know what a reasonable goal should be for this child until additional reading and math remediation have been in place for a while.  When my daughter was in 5th grade, she could barely function in math and she was reading Clifford books but even those could trip her up.  Once we started her with a reading program specifically for dyslexics she went from Clifford to Divergent in a year and a half.  

 

Math took longer because we honestly didn't know how far behind she was.  Her teacher kept letting her guess answers on multiple choice tests and she had the same lousy teacher for 3 years.  The average grades she was making did not even remotely reflect her true math functionality.  We assumed it was the poor instruction not the lack of subitization skills/passage of time/etc.  And we had never heard of dyscalculia.  Now that we understand the struggles a lot better, we did the same thing with math that we did with reading.  We started completely over from the very beginning skills that most kids have automatically.  It is working.  

 

Every child and situation is different.  With systematic, targeted remediation, this child may very well learn how to read and may be perfectly capable of learning at least some math, maybe even quite a bit of math.  Her path may need to be slow and there may be many side trips before finding the right way, but I hope the parents will not write off those skills without at least really trying to help her.  It seems like they aren't, since they are still seeking help.  Hugs to them.  And to you, too, for considering taking this on.

[lewelma]

OneStep, thanks so much for this.  I will spend some time this week reading the RB site and will get a chance to talk to the mom again on Thursday.

[PeterPan]

I'm with OneStep that you probably don't want to assume things till you've worked with the dc.  Most people think RightStart is fine, conceptual math, but RB Dots breaks down those basic steps SO much farther.  My ds had total, total blank looks before RB.  You can also write RB, btw.  I'm trying to remember how I got her email.  Maybe through the site?  She's super awesome.  

 

If you are going to meet with the mother, what you might do is ask her to bring the dd and go ahead and get RB Dots (after all, it's under $10) and TRY it on her.  You're going to know very quickly whether it's getting a connect or not.  

 

Has this lady gotten a developmental optometrist check for the child?  Sure would be nice to have to make sure you're not dealing with more than you think.  Like if you had dyslexia AND really nasty developmental vision problems (like 2 yo level visual memory in a teen, the way my dd had), you'd look like you were in some kind of terrible hole.  That discrepancy between read and oral math makes you wonder.

 

Anyways, definitely consider writing RB.  She's a doll.

[OneStepAtATime]

You might look at ordering the CLE reference charts. When working with higher level math teach her to refer to the charts. Work on basic skills separately, without the charts.

[geodob]

I would question whether she has Dyscalculia, and really take into consideration?

Her mother thinking that she can do math word problems.

But more specifically, if the word problem is presented orally, rather than visually?

 

Numbers are something that can be concieved of, without the symbols that we use to represent numbers,

Where we can concieve of different sized quantities.

With the traditional approach to learning math in Japan?

They strongly avoid exposing children to the symbols used for numbers, until around 9 years of age.

 

But 9 year old Japanese children, generally have the math abilities of 12 year old Western children,

Though Japanese children learn to concieve of numbers on an Abacus?

Where they feel a number, as the position of their fingers as they form a number of their Abacus.

 

Then when they learn the symbols for numbers at 9 years of age?

The symbol is linked to the feeling of their fingers on the Abacus,

So that they 'feel the number'.

Where I would strongly suggest, that if she was provided with a way to do math. That didn't use symbols for numbers?

Instead 'felt numbers'.

Then we she would very able to do math.

 

Once this is consolidated.  Then the number symbols could be returned to.

But this time, the number symbols are associated with the 'felt numbers'.

 

So that the 'felt number', stands between and connects the sound of a number with its visual symbol.

 

But I would suggest that a parallel approach could be used with her reading and writing?

Which would involve learning 'Sign Language'?

As a link between the spoken and written word.

 

So that she can hear a word and sign it.

As well as see a word and sign it.

Where the 'sign' becomes the link between the written word and the sound of the word.

 

With developing a new way to link them, as the crucial factor.