Doing subjects orally...especially math...

[Mommyfaithe]

Math with my 6 y/o has been a perpetual battle....plus he always writes his number backwards which makes him more upset, so, I decided yesterday to try and do his math orally. Well, a 45 minute lesson was completed in 8 minutes! He could do all the math in his head....he could show me his answers with bear counters...read the clock etc....He even worked word problems in his head....shouting out the answers....LOL....

 

8 MINUTES!!! Happy Boy! Happy Momma.....

 

So, we won't be writing out our answers for a while, or I will write them so he can see them properly...and yes, I figure he will have to learn to write it all out for himself at some point...but for now...concepts and facts...and you know what? He knows'em!:D

 

YAY!

Faithe

[mammaofbean]

awesome! we are about half and half on the math right now with my almost 6yo dd. number reversals are quite common for her, i don't point it out very often but she gets upset if she notices. she also likes any computer based math.

[MicheleinMN]

Hooray!! It feels so good when school works. :)

[mama25angels]

 

8 MINUTES!!! Happy Boy! Happy Momma.....

 

Faithe

 

:iagree: that quote sums up everything very nicely, good job!!!!!!!!!!

[wapiti]

Good for you for finding a strategy that works, that doesn't allow difficult areas to get in the way of what may be hidden strengths!!!

 

FWIW, here's another idea that may help you (helped my ds), when it comes to writing math - number stamps - the kind that are dotted and can be traced afterward (or not :D). My local teacher supply store has them.

[angela in ohio]

My younger two both had trouble with writing. I moved handwriting and school subjects to two different categories. We did a lot of schoolwork with me as "scribe" or with number stamps/stickers, especially math, and they worked on a small amount of dedicated handwriting practice each day. Eventually (around the time they turned 8,) the two skills merged. :001_smile:

[Tammyla]

:party:

 

That was a score!

 

(Small white board with vis-a-vi wet erase (or non-stinky dry-erase if they exist) markers can be very helpful and enticing for writing challenges. It might be an easy transitional next step for later.)

[EKS]

Doing math orally for the younger ones is definitely the way to go! When he needs to write something down, and it is something where *he* really needs to be doing the writing (carrying in addition problems, for example), try having him do it on a small whiteboard instead of paper--it really helps!

[Guest]

Yay!

 

I have started having my son do half of the work himself and then I let him do the rest orally. It definitely makes the morning go more smoothly!

[woolybear]

Good for you! (and him) Smart mommma, for figuring that out and going with it for now. Don't you just love it when you find something like this? It's like trying to make a puzzle piece fit over and over and then finally realizing it goes somewhere else in the puzzle.:)

[blessedmom3]

Great! You might realize that you can even do two lessons/day .He seems able to progress quickly. I sometimes write the answers for my ds , 6.

We use CLE mah and he is doing so good with it but they do have a lot of writing for a little hand.

[Crimson Wife]

My younger two both had trouble with writing. I moved handwriting and school subjects to two different categories. We did a lot of schoolwork with me as "scribe" or with number stamps/stickers, especially math, and they worked on a small amount of dedicated handwriting practice each day. Eventually (around the time they turned 8,) the two skills merged. :001_smile:

 

:iagree:Though I still do a fair amount of transcribing answers for my 8 y.o., especially in math & grammar (she's working ahead of grade level in those subjects and she has difficulty fitting her answers into the spaces provided)

[kalanamak]

 

So, we won't be writing out our answers for a while, or I will write them so he can see them properly...and yes, I figure he will have to learn to write it all out for himself at some point...but for now...concepts and facts...and you know what? He knows'em!:D

 

YAY!

/QUOTE]

 

Yes, yay! When I was doing a fair amount of scribing for my son, we would pick a number for the day, and work side-by-side with a small whiteboard. I would write out the answer except the digit of the day, and he would fill in with a nice colored marker just that digit. My perfectionist boy was happier knowing his messy attempts were going to be expunged. HTH!

[Rivka]

We do almost all our math orally, and it's a huge help.

 

Does anyone who does oral math have to go through portfolio review? The one question my husband has is whether we will have trouble at review time if the math is not in a child's handwriting.

[walkermamaof4]

My ds was just like this. The funny thing is, he flew through RS math A and B and was way better at math than my girls, so I was kind of excited about testing time which is required in NC at age 7. When the test administrator was done, she said he couldn't complete the test in math. For a moment I was shocked. Then she went on to say she wasn't allowed to prompt him and she had given him problems on a page with column addition and subtraction problems of several digits. I didn't realize that I had done so much orally, that he hadn't actually seen problems written this way. So if I orally asked him to do it, he could do it in his head. But when he saw it, he had no idea what it meant or how to write his answers!

 

Now I know better and show him all pages but sometimes act as his scribe. Even this week at almost 8 he made a reversal of the # 3, which is not common for him. But I guess it still happens at age 8, even though his math skills are great!

[kitten18]

Whew, this thread is very comforting to me. I still do a lot of writing for DD (7) and I was afraid I was the only one.

We do work on handwriting every day but things are so much smoother when I do the majority of the writing.

[Crimson Wife]

Does anyone who does oral math have to go through portfolio review? The one question my husband has is whether we will have trouble at review time if the math is not in a child's handwriting.

 

We are enrolled in a virtual charter and have to submit a work sample once per month. I have my DS do a worksheet that involves circling the answer or drawing lines to match items in one column with those in another, etc. since he's not yet writing. That's been fine with our assigned "educational specialist". :001_smile:

[Jen in PA]

This is exactly what we have always done and I think it has made school so much more manageable. DD is suddenly able to write as much and as small as seems to be expected with the materials we are using, but that has only happened in the past couple of months.

[FO4UR]

I do this quite a bit too.:D

 

I skip the measuring/clock pages in workbooks as well. We grab a ruler, tape measure and run about the house and I scribe while they measures stuff. I ask them what time it is frequently. It gets done with no tears.

 

I just hope we don't have to worry about pencil/paper tests any time soon.

[Moniksca]

I started doing this as well for my ds who is 9. If we didn't it would take him 2 hours to finish one math lessons. He gets bogged down with having to write down his answers. If he has to write down the question to figure it out, he does it on the white board. It's been wonderful.

[laundrycrisis]

Our 7.5 yo also has great difficulty with writing. Lately when he does math in a workbook, and there are intermediate steps to be worked out, I sit next to him with a white board and do all that intermediate writing for him, while we discuss what to do and he does the arithmetic and tells me what to write. All he has to write down himself is the answer we arrive at. I had not realized that so much of his stress with math had to do with the act of writing...it was really bogging him down.