Suggestions for teaching left, right, center; beginning, middle, and end?

[sweetpea3829]

DD6 is likely dsylexic, but not yet diagnosed. One of her biggest struggles right now is positional orientation. If you take a row of items and ask her to identify the beginning of the row, or the first item in the row, she is very confused.

 

This is hampering her in spelling and in identifying, naming and writing numbers past 10.

 

She does understand left and right...I have tried relating "beginning" and "first in a row" with left and "end" and "last" with right...but she still does not consistently "get it."

 

Any strategies that you've used to teach your child this concept?

[Tap]

Stuffed animals and a deck of cards giving directions to move them around.

 

 

I used to teach Fast Forward which is a reading program. In this program a child had to follow directions like this. There were a few kids who struggled with words like 'infront of' or 'behind'. I used 6 or so Beanie Babies set in a grid. Then a stack of index cards that I wrote directional words on. THey would practice reading the words, then move one of the BBs to follow the directions. It would obviously work with any item, but I like items that have weight to them.

 

Another idea would be to lay out a pack of M&Ms (or hand full of chocolate chips) in a grid and then allow them to eat them in the order the cards came up. So if the card said "in front of" they could eat an M&M that was in front of another M&M.

 

 

As we went through these, the kids would vebalize what they were doing. "The yellow bear is in front of the blue bear". "The white bear is to the left of the yellow bear".

Edited May 18, 2012 by Tap, tap, tap

[TippyCanoe]

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[MomatHWTK]

I thought of your post when I saw this movie at Starfall:

http://www.starfall.com/n/skills/left-to-right/load.htm?f

[Geo]

DISCLAIMER: I have only used this with a right-handed child:

 

In the beginning, I prompted by asking, "Which hand do you write with?

 

He would pause, and think.....look at his hands...think a little longer....

 

and always answered correctly: "My right!"

 

I think it was more because the words "right" and "write" seemed like a match to him. It made sense...and that alone grounded his position in the world. Once he knew where "right" was, he then knew where "left" might be, and so on.

 

I relate with him. I grew up on the east coast of FL. I always knew where east was because I knew the general direction of the beach....and then there was always the coastal breeze... :rolleyes:

 

Then we moved to the mountains..not east of them...or west, or south, north...but IN the mountains. I have been lost for 20 years now. If someone were to ask me, "Where's east?"...I'd have to reply, "Wait an hour and I'll tell you"...because I'd have to watch which direction the sun was moving. LOL...true story!

 

Note: ds was double-handed until he was 8yo, so I chose one writing hand for him. He still eats with his left from time to time, and writes equally well with his left even though he nevers practices writing with his left.

:leaving:Stage right...is that my right..or your right?

[MomatHWTK]

Maybe put the terms in a broader context, like a story?

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Top-Tab-Book-Beginning-Middle-End-FREEBIE

[sweetpea3829]

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone! DD does understand left from right and is pretty good about identifying those positions on paper and on herself (forget it on identifying it on others).

 

It's more the concept of where the beginning of a line of objects would be...as well as the end of a line of objects. She's all kinds of confused with this.

[Tap]

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone! DD does understand left from right and is pretty good about identifying those positions on paper and on herself (forget it on identifying it on others).

 

It's more the concept of where the beginning of a line of objects would be...as well as the end of a line of objects. She's all kinds of confused with this.

 

If I understand correctly, this is one of the problems that a specific child in FF had. This is an example of a tricky question for this girl....

 

If there were 5 oranges in a vertical line (ie a line going away from you), which one is first?

 

She struggled with identifying that the line had a direction unless there was a face on the item. She struggled with saying which was the beginning, the one further away, or "closest vs afar", she didn't know if they faced the person looking at them, to the left/right, or turned around with their back to the viewer.

 

LOL There was also the time that she decided that items could also be looking up at the sky, or down to the ground. LOL She was very, very thorough child.

 

In the case of 5 oranges, she could also make a reasonable assumption that there were indeed 5 horizontal separate lines, and they were each first, last and middle in their own line.

 

That is why in her case we used the bears. Having a face on an item, made the line have a direction to her and then we built on the notion that while we usually stand in line, looking at other peoples back-side.......when talking about a line of items, we assume we are talking about the face-side. We also talked about that if the oranges were facing side-ways, they that could be considered a line, BUT in math or another problem, that would be identified as being 'side-by-side in a line' (or some other identifying words) and not 'front to back'. She had to be willing to accept that if were talking about a line, with not other identifiers, each item would be facing you like a classroom, faces a teacher.

 

 

Once we practiced with items with faces, we moved on to items without. She eventually mastered it, but I think it had to do more with memorization of what the words meant than truly understanding that we talk about lines as if they were facing us....even though we stand in a line with things away from us.

Edited May 21, 2012 by Tap, tap, tap

[sweetpea3829]

That's really interesting. I hadn't thought about the possibility that she was confusing each individual object as being at the beginning of it's own line. I can see how that would confuse somebody.

 

Sadly, I don't think this is actually DD's issue though. I had used the bear counters many times in this exercise, always with them facing in a particular direction (like lined up to jump off the cliff...who's going to jump first? Morbid, I know)...and she STILL is confused with it.

 

She just had a vision therapy assessment last week and failed miserably...sooooo...we'll be starting VT as soon as I can get everything scared away with insurance and whatnot.

 

I had a feeling this was a big part of her struggles. We shall see.

 

Unfortunately, I'm not crazy about the COVD we're taking her too...even more unfortunate, he's the only one relatively close. He seems nice enough...but I just wasn't crazy about him. Can't place it.

 

Oh well....I'm thankful he's only a half hour away.

[Catherine]

I know of what you speak. My 10 yo ds still can't tell right from left hand in piano. Sigh. I don't have any ideas.