Maths frustration!

[Ausmumof3]

we had a bad homeschool day here!  Dd has been struggling with math for the last probably year and a half now.  I've toyed with the idea of switching to Math mammoth for a while.  Anyway they have a sale so I tried the placement test.  While I don't want to rebuy resources at least it's digital and cheaper than Singapore.  Anyway she bombed the placement test for last year (6 months ago).  Big time.  Out of curiosity I gave her the Singapore placement test and she bombed that just as badly!  

I feel so frustrated.  If we'd been slacking off on math I wouldn't feel so bad but we've worked so hard at it and it feels like retention is zero.

To add to that she WAS my mathy kid.  Ds had always struggled so as long as he is progressing I'm ok with that.  Dd started really well but about this time last year she started hating it and she's basically switched off ever since.  We can get through the unit but by the time we get back to it she has no idea again.

Anyway, I'm not really sure what I'm after.  I'm at the point where if we can't get grade level by next year I'm going to do school.  I honestly wish now we'd done something like Abeka or Saxon.  Something with a tonne of repetition of the same processes.  something totally boring and repetitive that at least produces kids who know how to follow a process even if the deep understanding is missing.

This is the kid that I question learning challenges but honestly she can be So smart when she's engaged.  It's just like she's so disengaged with anything math related right now.

[kristin0713]

How old is she and what have you been using?  Math Mammoth and Singapore are hard to just switch to.  Have you looked at CLE?  There is constant review and drill. Most kids place behind in CLE so be aware of that before doing the placement test. 

[Ausmumof3]

45 minutes ago, kristin0713 said:

How old is she and what have you been using?  Math Mammoth and Singapore are hard to just switch to.  Have you looked at CLE?  There is constant review and drill. Most kids place behind in CLE so be aware of that before doing the placement test. 

No we have been using Singapore.  I did the placement test for the program we have been using half a year behind and she literally couldn't tackle half the problems.  I think I'm feeling doubly frustrated because Singapore is so expensive and so much hassle to get here but I keep telling myself it's worth it because it's the best program etc.  but it hasn't been.  In terms of the results we are getting I should have used the stupid $ store workbooks.  I feel like I've invested so much of myself in terms of $$ and effort.  Maths has been the one thing we've been pretty rigorous about!

[kristin0713]

How old is she?  Have you been using the HIG and teaching the methods or just using the student text/workbook?

[Ausmumof3]

She's 9. (Only just)  Using Hig textbook and workbook plus mental math from the back.  We don't always do every problem in the textbook as we've had too many days where we've spent 1.5 or 2 hours on math.   She shows some traits of dyslexia so the reading aspect can present problems.  However she seems to have a load of stuff she could do an suddenly can't.  For example she could subtract three digits with renaming fine and suddenly when she got to four digits she started messing up. She'd rename 1000 but instead of calling it 9 hundreds, 9 tens 10 ones she'd randomly allocate six to the hundreds five to the tens and nothing to the ones.  I can see that in her brain she needed 600 to subtract 500 and 50 to subtract 40.  We've been through with the cubes over again and she was fine and then today she reverted. She had equivalent fractions down but instead of changing to equivalent fractions to add she will add 1/2 to 1/4 and get 2/6. And measurement is like a nightmare.  She seems to have limited real world sense of stuff.  So for example today she said she'd measure a pool in kilometres!  

To be fair it's been a while since we've touched on some of the stuff.  It feels like none of last years work has stuck at all though.  Of course my other issue is the time suck.  I'm teaching three kids at three levels.  I can handle 20-30 minutes of text book plus HIG teaching but then I really need them to be able to pick it up and go with the workbook without me.  

 

[kristin0713]

First of all, she is still really young and you have a lot of time! It sounds like she needs a program with a lot more review and spiral introduction to subjects.  I would look at CLE. It is definitely going to place her behind but that's ok.  She is young enough to have plenty of time to catch up. The workbooks are small and manageable. They have Skills Development workbooks for specific topics to help a child catch up in specific areas as well.  

[PeterPan]

3 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

She's 9. (Only just)  Using Hig textbook and workbook plus mental math from the back.  We don't always do every problem in the textbook as we've had too many days where we've spent 1.5 or 2 hours on math.   She shows some traits of dyslexia so the reading aspect can present problems.  However she seems to have a load of stuff she could do an suddenly can't.  For example she could subtract three digits with renaming fine and suddenly when she got to four digits she started messing up. She'd rename 1000 but instead of calling it 9 hundreds, 9 tens 10 ones she'd randomly allocate six to the hundreds five to the tens and nothing to the ones.  I can see that in her brain she needed 600 to subtract 500 and 50 to subtract 40.  We've been through with the cubes over again and she was fine and then today she reverted. She had equivalent fractions down but instead of changing to equivalent fractions to add she will add 1/2 to 1/4 and get 2/6. And measurement is like a nightmare.  She seems to have limited real world sense of stuff.  So for example today she said she'd measure a pool in kilometres!  

To be fair it's been a while since we've touched on some of the stuff.  It feels like none of last years work has stuck at all though.  Of course my other issue is the time suck.  I'm teaching three kids at three levels.  I can handle 20-30 minutes of text book plus HIG teaching but then I really need them to be able to pick it up and go with the workbook without me.  

 

That's a really long time to need to spend on math. This is an age when learning disabilities become more apparent, yes, and what you're describing IS stuff that would happen with learning disabilities. The forgetting, yes, but especially her real world sense. That's actually the HEART of the math disability, believe it or not, the lack of number sense. I use some workbooks that are really good for this. https://www.carsondellosa.com/search-catalog?q=using the standards&fq=showonly_string_mv-AND|bookmediatype-ebook Here see if this shows it. It's the Using the Standards series, and they have books for each major math topic (measurement, geometry, algebra, computation, etc.). They have them for each grade level, so just eyeball it and back up to a place that looks good to you. My ds has all three SLDs (dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia), and these have been good for him. The measurement ones spend a lot of time doing real life stuff, like the stuff that you might tell yourself oh we ought to do that but then never do it. So like we'll measure distances with our feet one day, with another novel measurement the next day, do scaling, compare. Lots of real world. Not hard to implement. And they're ebooks, meaning you can just print them or throw them on an ipad. I print, but either way would work.

Where do you live? What are your options for getting evals? Ronit Bird is also amazing for math disability. You can come over to the LC board and gab. Lots of people dealing with math issues there. :)

 

[KrissiK]

I am a huge proponent of CLE. My kids have struggled and struggled over the years, and CLE is where we landed and are  making progress. It is very straightforward, the instructions are simple and easy to understand and there is lots of review. IMO, they deal with fractions better than many curricula.

[Tanaqui]

Given that you say that she shows signs of dyslexia, what you said after that certainly reads like a learning disability.

It's *possible* that this is mostly a phase - my older kid sometimes would go through stages like that, and we'd take a break out of frustration - in a few weeks she'd suddenly break through and stop making those mistakes PLUS grasp the new material. But I'd get a full evaluation done rather than holding on to that.

[ktgrok]

Agreeing she needs CLE, with the constant review. A single lesson will have adding, subtraction, multiplication, measurement, geometry, money and time. Every day. There is no forgetting. 

Also, I read the problems to my daughter who has dyslexia. I don't want her reading to hold back her math. 

[Ausmumof3]

16 hours ago, Tanaqui said:

Given that you say that she shows signs of dyslexia, what you said after that certainly reads like a learning disability.

It's *possible* that this is mostly a phase - my older kid sometimes would go through stages like that, and we'd take a break out of frustration - in a few weeks she'd suddenly break through and stop making those mistakes PLUS grasp the new material. But I'd get a full evaluation done rather than holding on to that.

This was very much my oldest and why I haven't stressed too much before now.  He still has his headaches.  She actually did really well again today.  She does pick concepts up quite quickly but they just don't seem to stick.

[Ausmumof3]

8 hours ago, Ktgrok said:

Agreeing she needs CLE, with the constant review. A single lesson will have adding, subtraction, multiplication, measurement, geometry, money and time. Every day. There is no forgetting. 

Also, I read the problems to my daughter who has dyslexia. I don't want her reading to hold back her math. 

I have done this in the past.  I've stopped as she's reading novels for pleasure and I assumed the reading was going ok.  But I realised when listening to her read aloud she misses occasional words.  It's not that she can't read them but she skims a lot.  For a fiction story she can read like this and understand what's going on but I suspect with math problems she might be missing occasional words and not getting the sense of the problem.  Math and science seem to need more accurate reading skills in a sense.

[Ausmumof3]

17 hours ago, PeterPan said:

That's a really long time to need to spend on math. This is an age when learning disabilities become more apparent, yes, and what you're describing IS stuff that would happen with learning disabilities. The forgetting, yes, but especially her real world sense. That's actually the HEART of the math disability, believe it or not, the lack of number sense. I use some workbooks that are really good for this. https://www.carsondellosa.com/search-catalog?q=using the standards&fq=showonly_string_mv-AND|bookmediatype-ebook Here see if this shows it. It's the Using the Standards series, and they have books for each major math topic (measurement, geometry, algebra, computation, etc.). They have them for each grade level, so just eyeball it and back up to a place that looks good to you. My ds has all three SLDs (dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia), and these have been good for him. The measurement ones spend a lot of time doing real life stuff, like the stuff that you might tell yourself oh we ought to do that but then never do it. So like we'll measure distances with our feet one day, with another novel measurement the next day, do scaling, compare. Lots of real world. Not hard to implement. And they're ebooks, meaning you can just print them or throw them on an ipad. I print, but either way would work.

Where do you live? What are your options for getting evals? Ronit Bird is also amazing for math disability. You can come over to the LC board and gab. Lots of people dealing with math issues there. ?

 

I have avoided repeating the "we will finished the lesson come what may" mistake. I've set a time limit on math and we stop after 45 minutes and revisit.  It was stubbornness on my part and fear of "getting behind".

evals are so expensive and just not in the budget right now.  I did the online dyslexia screening and some parts fit but not all so I'm not sure if it's enough for a diagnosis.  If we were doing mainstream education I would find a way to make it happen to get the help needed.  For our homeschool situation at this stage it doesn't make financial sense.  I'm struggling to get the funds to buy the right curriculum so it seems best to spend the money on the curriculum that will help anyway and treat as if that's what's happening.  Then if it ends up being unnecessary well that's ok.