Elementary math for ADHD combined type

[hands-on-mama]

We need help. My 2nd grader that will be 8 next mont is very bright. She just can't focus to save her life. We haven't tried mess. As of now, my husband is against them. Since I'm the one doing the schooling, my mind is opening up to them. ;)

 

We are currently doing CLE Grade 2. She is halfway through the level. It is seriously torture for us though. Problem is, she needs the review or she doesn't remember anything. We are comin off a 2 week break and for some reason 8+2 was even hard to remember. She knows it but just can't recall it. She feels defeated when that happens. It should not take 2 hours to do a math lesson. We have tried breaking it up into 4 sections with activity in between. We have tried different times of day. We have tried taking everything away. We have also tried MUS and Singapore. Mastery just isn't the best fit for her. Sometimes I wonder, though, if we should try Singapore over again and back up some. I just don't know really. I don't want to bail on CLE unless I have to. It's been a fight for months now.

 

Suggestions please! I am desperate! Just give some knowledge if you have been there done that.

[Tiramisu]

In second grade we left CLE, as much as I loved it, because of issues with my dd's short attention span and avoidance behaviors. We started Singapore PM US edition. It's a lot more manageable, IMO, than the standards ed. for a wiggly kid. 

 

We have had retention issues with Singapore and to remedy that this year we are using Evan Moor Daily Math Practice everyday, which only has five problems a day, hitting different areas.

 

Last year, I had dd work through CLE light units to review when she finished the A and B texts. This year, in addition to the daily practice, I'm going to have her go through the extra practice books when she finishes the A and B texts. If it goes well this year, I think I'll continue the same but use the Intensive Practice books, but this year I got the extra practice books used as a set so I'll just use those. 

[hands-on-mama]

Thank you! I will look into this!

[EmilyGF]

I'm not sure how extreme your daughter's inattention is (has she been diagnosed with ADHD or is she just super duper wiggly?). I have a super duper wiggly daughter and was surprised a few weeks ago when I made her do math on a Saturday and she focused like a champ and was making crazy-good connections. She takes ice skating lessons Saturday mornings from 8-9 and was a different girl (math-wise) when we got home.

 

But I don't know what to suggest. Is her sibling in the room when she does math? Does she need ear protective headphones? A 3-ply cardboard? Does she do something like ReflexMath on a regular basis?

 

For Singapore, you could stagger the intensive practice so that she gets some review.

 

Emily

[hands-on-mama]

She has been diagnosed since she was 6. We were told it was it was pretty severe at that point. It hasn't caused a huge issue (until this year) since we homeschool. I try to always have her do something active before school. It's currently super wet outside though. Being active beforehand doesn't really help her all that much unfortunately. Sometimes it actually makes it harder for her to focus.

[KSinNS]

Lots of math fact drill (flash cards, games, worksheets, and Reflex) separate from the actual math. For T, about that age I used Grubes method for teaching arithmetic. It's on the archive. It was great because it was all oral and worked on number sense, integrating operations, and such. She now is pretty solid, and is becoming a good math student.

 

With D, we did most of MM on the white board or orally. He liked that. I'd also let him make up his own problems, which broke it up, and he had fun adding huge numbers. That helped with the squirming. Knowing when to stop is also key.

[SilverMoon]

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Edited May 18 by SilverMoon

[reign]

My oldest has major attention issues. She needs me to do her math with her. It helps if she verbally talks through all her work aloud. It helps her stay on track and it helps me recognize when she isn't paying attention. She also needed a lot more review than her sisters to master her facts. This has come via apps and 1$ store books.

 

At 7 she would not have been able to sit at the table and complete a row of problems without me. I would have to say things like "now what?" "Let's do the next one." "What comes next?" "Moving on." Thankful she is getting better at this and her sisters are fully capable of doing a page by themselves.

[hands-on-mama]

I am already sitting with her and it's just not working. That's the issue. She tries to focus. Of course, I get frustrated when she can't and it spirals from there. I understand about knowing when to quit, but at the same time, we have to move forward at a steady pace. We only do math 4 days a week as it is with co-op in the mix.

[hands-on-mama]

We have kind of a crazy schedule. I work three more rings a week from home from 8-12. I try to have her work on math beside me those day. Today, we worked on it after I got through working and I feel like it was worse than average.

[zarabellesmom]

Every time we took a break, my daughter lost all of her math facts. So frustrating. I don't have a lot of advice. My daughter is a pretty good math student. It's her favorite subject. That said, she does have adhd inattentive type and makes a million mistakes. Understanding makes no difference. It's beyond frustrating for both of us. I always always always sit beside her. (I know you said you were already doing that, so good for you!) She definitely required extra fact practice. After four years of practice with multiplication facts, day in and day out, via reflex math, she finally has them mastered. We have done a fair amount of testing and learned that she also has slow processing speed. I think this is pretty common with ADHD. When that is the case, even mastered facts can look slower than you would expect. Patience is my friend. I'm just suggesting that while she may very well know that 8+2 is 10, it might take an extra second or two for that to pop out of her brain.

 

As for any other help... I don't know. We bust in the last two months started medication. I'm not saying it's a solution for everyone, but it's been such a blessing here.

[eternallytired]

I feel your pain.  In our house, I was the one reluctant to try meds.  DH has ADHD and was on meds from about first grade until some time in high school, when he learned enough about his strengths and weaknesses to compensate and do well without the meds, so he was enthusiastic about trying them for our oldest.  (Before then he was really struggling to get his schoolwork done and getting negative feedback because of it, so the meds really boosted his confidence and helped his performance.)  I gave in this spring because poor ODS was taking longer and longer and getting less and less done, and I felt awful about schooling taking so much time (JUST math and one aspect of lang. arts each day took 2-3 hours, and his sister finished the same work in 30-45 minutes) and me having to constantly be on his case.  We were both (all) getting frustrated.

 

I used RightStart, and the conceptual foundation was excellent.  The games were great, too, since they were interactive--until DD got too competitive and I had to find ways to turn all the games into Solitaire-style, at which point ODS couldn't focus anymore.  (I moved him to Beast Academy because he wanted more of a challenge--but without meds, even that curric would have taken forever.)

 

As for trouble retaining things--you could try giving options for fun review.  My kids LOVE Prodigy (a free, online math-based RPG that naturally cycles through a whole host of topics and adjusts difficulty to each student), and there are lots of other free games to drill various skills.  In addition, RightStart has its card games book that you could use to cover pretty much any topic together, and of course there are the daily-review worksheets like folks above mentioned.  If it was built into her schedule (and if she had choices), the review wouldn't seem demeaning (not quite the right word) and might even be an enjoyable way of avoiding frustration by keeping the concepts all fresh in her mind.

[Guest]

In second grade we left CLE, as much as I loved it, because of issues with my dd's short attention span and avoidance behaviors. We started Singapore PM US edition. It's a lot more manageable, IMO, than the standards ed. for a wiggly kid. 

 

We have had retention issues with Singapore and to remedy that this year we are using Evan Moor Daily Math Practice everyday, which only has five problems a day, hitting different areas.

 

Last year, I had dd work through CLE light units to review when she finished the A and B texts. This year, in addition to the daily practice, I'm going to have her go through the extra practice books when she finishes the A and B texts. If it goes well this year, I think I'll continue the same but use the Intensive Practice books, but this year I got the extra practice books used as a set so I'll just use those. 

I hope you don;t mind my butting in...would you please clarify why the PM is more manageable than the Standards edition?

Edited December 29, 2015 by Paradox5

[sbgrace]

My son, who is severe combined type, did pretty well with Math In Focus. He liked the look (lots of white space, color but simple). The number of problems seemed just enough. I worked with him and we did much of it on a white board. I would make sure he mastered whatever and call it done.

The review part/spiral is harder. I like the idea someone had of adding the Evan Moore.

 

He is doing well with CLE, but I didn't start until 5th grade with that. We skip repetitive problems in the lessons. I don't know that it would have worked younger.

 

My son does worlds better with medication. We tried a short acting form, which is 3 hours or so and out of the system. Just in case you/hubby might decide to try something...short acting felt less scary somehow to me.

Edited December 29, 2015 by sbgrace

[Tiramisu]

I hope you don;t mind my butting in...would you please clarify why the PM is more manageable than the Standards edition?

 

PM covers fewer topics than standards. That divide is more apparent from level 4 up. 

 

I don't know if I have ever held a standards text in my hand but I've looked at samples online and they seem more crowded. 

 

I would be lying if I said I wasn't worried about my dd missing some topics, but realistically I know she'll get those eventually. It's better for her not to be overloaded now. I have a history of being a pusher and it took me a long time to realize I have bright kids who get overloaded rather easily. I've learned it's better to err on the side of not overloading rather than trying to cover too much.

[Tiramisu]

OP, I just thought I'd tell you about my second dd, because something about your dd's frustration with her lack of recall hit me.

 

She would have random and frequent problems with math fact recall, and seemed to forget every fact she ever learned after a break. I switched her from Singapore to CLE in second grade, which is the opposite to the change I made with my other dd. Her facts finally stuck, but it wasn't until fourth or fifth grade that they became automatic.

 

Even after that, she took a long time with math, and we were right there with two hour lessons. Once I learned about scribing, I did that. Scribing relieved a huge amount of stress, because she could focus her energy on the mental processes rather than the physical writing.

 

I had her tested and her visual-motor integrations scores were very low. In 8th grade, I had her evaluated for vision issues and she did a few months of vision therapy and that helped a lot. It wound up being a fixable eye muscle weakness.

 

Anyway, what I really wanted to tell you is that those marathon math sessions (along with the vision therapy) paid off. She is excelling in her math and science classes in high school. So I know from experience the time you put in won't be wasted.

 

Now that I've learned more about learning issues, I'd recommend looking into getting thorough testing if this situation continues much longer, because the stress of it can be too much and not good for either of you in the long-term, not to mention the day to day. I've had to have thorough neuropsychological testing on two of my other kids, and OT testing on the two I've mentioned in this thread. The OT testing can often be covered by insurance, which is really nice and can be a good start to under cover visual and motor issues. An OT can make the recommendation for a vision therapy evaluation with the right kind of optometrist  (covd.org) if there are any suspicions about eye muscle functioning. It worked that way with two of mine.

 

The thing is, at least for my two kids who had neurolopsycological testing, that they really look and act like they had ADHD, but they don't. There are other processing issues that make things hard for them. It was incredibly helpful to get that information.

 

It is very sad that your dd feels so frustrated and defeated and it would be nice to figure out if there's a reason why and what you could do to help her, rather than face that torture everyday. 

 

In the meanwhile, try scribing and see if that makes a difference and takes the pressure off a bit.

Edited December 29, 2015 by Tiramisu

[SarahW]

My ADHD-Inattentive kid has been doing well with BA. He likes the GN format, and only rarely do the pages look like he has to do lots of calculations.

 

It helps that math is something he hyperfocuses on. He doesn't always focus on the right thing at the right time, but he gets a page or two done in a reasonable amount of time.

 

For review and fluency I added in select pages from a Singapore worksheets book and My Pals are Here enrichment book. They're similar to BA in that they don't have pages of numbers, but still require a good number of calculations to find the answer.

 

We also orally run through math facts. Seems to help a bit. Though just today I asked him what 8x7 was and he answered "What? Do I look like a multiplication chart?!" lol.

 

Getting numbers off the page though seems to key for him. Even MM had too many numbers on the page. He found all those equations staring at him overwhelming and distracting.

 

Just an idea.

[sunshineslp]

I use sm standards and really like the extra review built in. But I've read that you can switch between standards and U.S. edition, so if it doesn't work out, there's always that:). I think it would be good for a wiggly kid. My ds7 is that way and I've often times considered whether he had some adhd (but not diagnosed). We do right start too and it's good but almost makes it harder for him to concentrate. He needs more mastery and also something to look at instead of all manipulatives. A worksheet seems to help focus him.

 

 

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[Guest]

Has anyone mentioned McRuffy Math? I don't think it is a very well known program around here. The lessons are short-only one page a day. There is review and color. Just a thought.

 

To Tiramisu, thank you for the clarification.

[BooksandBoys]

My math boy (age 7, 2nd grade) is diagnosed severe ADHD combined type (and ASD). His attention challenges greatly impact his education (and my sanity :-)). We began successfully with casual math through play until he was five, then used Miquon Orange and Red with the first few books of Life of Fred. I added Singapore US edition when he was 6 (he tested into 2A) and continued Miquon. Eventually, we dropped LofF because I don't want to pay for then. Even though he likes both Singapore and Miquin, he opted to do much more Singapore each day than Miquon. To that end, he's now much more ahead in Singapore (halfway through 4A) than Miquon (starting Yellow, approximately beginning of 3rd grade), so he now uses Singapore to study the material and Miquon as a discovery/review. He's been doing this for about year, and it's worked really, really well. We do most of our drill orally, usually in the car (we also do a lot if word problems in the car. He does better with oral word problems than written ones for some reason). Usually, we use various apps for drill (XtraMath set to the 6 second response time, Zombie math, others), but I don't stress much about memorization as long as he knows how to derive the answer (ok, sometimes I panic and push for memorization, then I make a chart for the wall next to his work area and force myself to relax. I've done this with both addition and multiplication. I suddenly start panicking and want to stop his progress until he knows the facts. But, both times, when I've calmed down and made the chart, allowing him to keep progressing in the concepts, he soon memorizes what he needs to know. He's still working on the 7s and 8s times tables, but he can calculate them, so we keep moving through the math books because I calmed myself down.).

 

Moving on to new concepts is really the key for his success despite severe ADHD, I think. If he gets bored (like when we sat on addition facts), he completely loses any ability to focus, as opposed to the normal highly distracted but interested and "trying" to focus because he wants to learn math. Make sense? YMMV of course.

 

I don't know CLE, but I know that both Singapore and Miquon have lended themselves to allowing us to move forward so we can keep him interested.

[sunshineslp]

What is the zombie math booksandboys? Sounds fun:)

 

 

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[lacell]

I second Singapore and c-rods, which I use for a son with combined type. I prefer Gattegno or Mathematics Made Meaningful cards for the c-rods just because I struggle with Miquon's organization. Most people seem to like Miquon better though. I have combined type myself and find these two curricula work for me as the mom.

[hands-on-mama]

OP, I just thought I'd tell you about my second dd, because something about your dd's frustration with her lack of recall hit me.

 

She would have random and frequent problems with math fact recall, and seemed to forget every fact she ever learned after a break. I switched her from Singapore to CLE in second grade, which is the opposite to the change I made with my other dd. Her facts finally stuck, but it wasn't until fourth or fifth grade that they became automatic.

 

Even after that, she took a long time with math, and we were right there with two hour lessons. Once I learned about scribing, I did that. Scribing relieved a huge amount of stress, because she could focus her energy on the mental processes rather than the physical writing.

 

I had her tested and her visual-motor integrations scores were very low. In 8th grade, I had her evaluated for vision issues and she did a few months of vision therapy and that helped a lot. It wound up being a fixable eye muscle weakness.

 

Anyway, what I really wanted to tell you is that those marathon math sessions (along with the vision therapy) paid off. She is excelling in her math and science classes in high school. So I know from experience the time you put in won't be wasted.

 

Now that I've learned more about learning issues, I'd recommend looking into getting thorough testing if this situation continues much longer, because the stress of it can be too much and not good for either of you in the long-term, not to mention the day to day. I've had to have thorough neuropsychological testing on two of my other kids, and OT testing on the two I've mentioned in this thread. The OT testing can often be covered by insurance, which is really nice and can be a good start to under cover visual and motor issues. An OT can make the recommendation for a vision therapy evaluation with the right kind of optometrist (covd.org) if there are any suspicions about eye muscle functioning. It worked that way with two of mine.

 

The thing is, at least for my two kids who had neurolopsycological testing, that they really look and act like they had ADHD, but they don't. There are other processing issues that make things hard for them. It was incredibly helpful to get that information.

 

It is very sad that your dd feels so frustrated and defeated and it would be nice to figure out if there's a reason why and what you could do to help her, rather than face that torture everyday.

 

In the meanwhile, try scribing and see if that makes a difference and takes the pressure off a bit.

You may be on to something here. She was in OT for a while for speech and occupational therapy. She had core weakness and some other issues. She is way better than before but her motor skills still lag behind some. We may schedule an appointment to speak with her per about it all and see what she thinks. So I would see an OT first?

[Tiramisu]

You may be on to something here. She was in OT for a while for speech and occupational therapy. She had core weakness and some other issues. She is way better than before but her motor skills still lag behind some. We may schedule an appointment to speak with her per about it all and see what she thinks. So I would see an OT first?

 

If she's had speech and motor issues, the same types of things could be affecting her eye muscles. You could ask an OT to check her visual motor integration (OT's do that type of testing) and also ask if she sees anything that looks like a tracking or covergence issue.

 

You could also ask the OT about her handwriting and writing speed. She'll be able to see if there's anything that's slowing her down and tell you if therapy, even something you could do at home, might help with the writing specifically. Lots of kids like this have problems with their writing taking a long time to become automatic. When it's not, they have to use their mental energy to simply form numbers and letters so there's less space and energy left for thinking. My youngest really has that problem. She's in fourth grade this year and it does seem to be slowly getting better.

 

Since there is that history, you could also look to see if there's a provider nearby who does vision therapy evals. The best place to look is covd.org. Vision therapy is expensive, but we have been fortunate that the evals aren't too bad. I have four dd's who had evals, but only two needed therapy. The optometrist was honest in telling me the other two had issues but they were neurologically-based, not muscle based and he couldn't help for that.

 

I know you are working, but I'd try to put the time you have available to doing math with her. Really try the scribing. You could write in the workbook or do the problems on a white board. Write the problem as it appears and just write what she tells you without prompting unless she's really stuck and then talk her through it. One thing about scribing is that you find out very quickly if there's something they aren't fully understanding. The other thing is that your presence and help will be a comfort for her when she's feeling frustrated. Your support and encouragement will mean a lot to her.

 

I want to encourage you because my dd who is now 15 really had similarities. In addition to the math, she had some issues with stammering as a young child and was in OT for spd. She seemed to take time to develop but there's not much holding her back now. Sometimes, especially when she's tired, she has a hard time getting the right words out. But she's doing great in school and socially. It will all turn out okay, but you want to give them all the support you can. Don't question your accommodations. Just do what you can to help her be successful and it will pay off. Really.

Edited December 30, 2015 by Tiramisu

[ellebro]

My ADHD son has similar issues with forgetting things unless there is constant review. I found Teaching Textbooks to be the least painful/most effective for him. There is constant review, but not too much repetition (which overwhelms him. ) There is just enough conceptual instruction for him to click with the concept, but not so much to where he might get bogged down and confused with multiple conceptual angles at once, like he did with Math Mammoth.

Edited January 1, 2016 by ellebro