Math Struggles - a WWYD

[Mom2OandE]

DS had dyslexia/dysgraphia as well as high funct autism. He is very bright though and excels at knowing a lot of things as long as they are read to him, etc. He is making a lot of progress since we decided to homeschool this year. My one area of concern is math. he is good at it but the school he was at did not have him memorize his facts and as a result he is moving very very slowly through the curicullum (the curicullum isn't the issue). Would you stop for a few weeks and focus on memorizing facts in the hopes that when you continued he would move quicker through it with more confidence?

 

Thanks for your thoughts.

[Dory]

When we pulled my oldest home we had to stop for awhile and work on his fact memorization. It paid off in the end.

[Deee]

We tried to learn maths facts. We recited tables, skip counted, walked, stamped, clapped, wrote them out, made posters, etc, etc. None of it worked. We changed to MEP this year (DS is 11 and we jumped in at MEP6, with some backtracking for new topics). He gets it! He knows his tables (he couldn't recite them if he tried, but he can divide and multiply with the best of them). He's turning into a maths boy. For us, trying to learn tables was just an exercise in frustration. DS learned the info through repeated application in a good, conceptual maths program.

D

[morningcoffee]

Bumping so you can get some more responses. Facing the same dilemma here... do we keep moving with the curriculum and trust that ds will get it as he has to use his math facts or do we stop and drill ... and I know that drilling can be done in a fun way these days with new technology so it doesn't have to be bad as it sounds!

[Pen]

Math facts are often hard with dyslexia. I would suggest a few minutes each day to work on math facts drill, but not stopping the main program to do only math facts.

[kristi26]

Have you checked out Dianne Craft's ideas for this? She has some great suggestions on her site...

[5LittleMonkeys]

I would be careful of stopping use of your current math program. It is so easy at this age to get de-railed in math. Could you perhaps just cut your daily math lesson 10 minutes short and work on fact memorization during that time. You can let him use a chart in the meantime.

 

In the end, if you find your dc just can't memorize them please don't hesitate in just letting him use the chart. Some children just can't memorize with rote memorization. After awhile with a chart and the repetition of using the same facts over and over they can finally store them in long term memory. It just takes a while.

 

My dd has dyscalculia and processing problems. Rote memorization of math facts is impossible for her. For years she struggled with math and actually became phobic, to the point of vomiting when faced with doing math. Once we figured out what was going on she was already many, many years behind in math. I won't go into all the details but the one thing that we did that helped her tremendously was to take the pressure of memorizing those facts off of her. She uses a chart now and is able to sail through her work. When you think about it, as long as they understand the concept of of multiplication the only reason they need to know the facts is to just make their work less time consuming. It has nothing to do with their understanding of or skill in math reasoning.