The following tip sheets will help extend this learning to parents of all New Albany Floyd County Schools. Choose from many tip sheets with practical, hands-on ideas for you to use to help boost your child’s learning. Feel free to share these tip sheets with other parents.
See below for tips.
Help your teenager succeed in math
One of the strongest factors that have been scientifically proven to predict student success in school is parental involvement. So today you have already taken the biggest step to helping your teen succeed in math just by showing an interest and finding out more information!
Communication is always the key
There are four main things to remember about communication:
Communication at home
Talk to your son about what is going on in his math class. Don’t just focus on the topics that are being covered, but also on how your son is feeling about the topics and his math skills in general. Often dislike is used to cover up discomfort. So if your son says he doesn’t like a particular topic it may be because he is having trouble with it, and could really use some extra help.
Math is like a pyramid: securely learning the topics studied at higher levels requires a strong and broad foundation. If there are gaps in the foundation, it can lead to a shaky grasp of new material. It is never too late to go back and deepen your understanding of a foundational topic, like fractions. Everyone wants to do well, however we all need a little encouragement from time to time. Let your teen know that with a little help she can learn that stubborn math topic.
Make sure that your son writes all the dates for quizzes, tests and assignments in his agenda. Every day when you look at his agenda you can record these dates on another calendar so that you can check in with him to see how he is progressing.
Good communication
There are all kinds of communication, but sometimes how something is said is more important than what is being said. Many people have strong feelings about math, and they are not always good. In general, be as positive about math as possible. A “can-do” attitude improves chances for success. Support doesn’t always have to be answering math questions. Showing interest and offering advice on work and study habits are also good ways to encourage your teen.
Communication in the classroom
One of the largest differences, besides all the technology and manipulatives, between a math class twenty years ago and one today is an increase in the amount of words used to solve a problem. Communication is a key focus in all of today’s math classrooms. This is, in part, because of the curriculum’s focus on real life skills: what good is it if you can come up with the answer to an everyday problem if you can’t explain it to anyone?
Students are often not as successful as they could be because they communicate their answers poorly. When your teen does her homework, go over her answers together and look especially at the amount and quality of what she wrote. Ask her to verbally explain her answers to you in more detail. Then help her write out the more detailed explanations. Encourage her to use lots of words as well as diagrams, formulas, graphs, charts, and well set out calculations.
Communication with the school
Talk to your son’s teacher at the beginning of the semester. Let the teacher know that you want to keep informed about how your son is doing in math class. Give the teacher your contact information on a piece of paper. Include a daytime phone number and an e-mail address if possible, as a teacher often can easily send off a quick note to keep you updated on new developments.
Encourage your daughter to talk to her teacher about her progress as well. Let your daughter know that you expect her to show an interest in her own progress, as her education is a group effort with her at the lead.
Homework is… the most important part of any mathematics program. Math is just like any skill, practice makes perfect. Nobody expects to be good at playing an instrument or a sport without practice.
Homework should be done every day, even if all the assigned questions are already completed. Your son should be practicing his math skills at home on a regular basis by reviewing his notes, reading his textbook, and going over old questions and assessments, not just by doing the questions that were written on the board. Preparing for an assessment is not something that should only be done the night before. When your son habitually works backwards and looks forwards he will be able to take the “surprise” out of a surprise quiz since he will be in a perpetual state of preparedness. What a wonderful feeling that is!
All kinds of levels
Discuss your daughter’s short- and long-term goals. Her post-secondary plans will affect which math courses she will take in high school. There are three levels which lead down different paths. Being in the correct level will not only make her math class more relevant to her, but will also ensure that she can follow the path that she wants.
And most importantly…
No one can do well on an assessment that isn’t completed. Being there is the most important thing. Work done with technology or manipulatives, as well as investigations and cooperative learning, is difficult, sometimes almost impossible, to reproduce outside of the classroom.
Also, a good night’s sleep, a good attitude and a good math set, along with a pencil, eraser and calculator are excellent things to have for math class. Being there and being on time ensures that your teen won’t miss out on the vital instructions and teaching points that are the key to reaching your teen’s full mathematical potential.
For help:
For free help with Math and Science, students can call the following number:
1-877-ASK-ROSE
Free Math and Science Help for Indiana Students
Grades 6 -12
www.ASKROSE.org
Help with Dyscalculia
Dyscalculia (difficulty in learning or comprehending mathematics) was originally identified in case studies of patients who suffered specific arithmetic disabilities as a result of damage to specific regions of the brain. Recent research suggests that dyscalculia can also occur developmentally, as a genetically-linked learning disability which affects a person’s ability to understand, remember, and/or manipulate numbers and/or number facts (e.g. the multiplication tables). The term is often used to refer specifically to the inability to perform arithmetic operations, but is defined by some educational professionals and cognitive psychologists as a more fundamental inability to conceptualize numbers as abstract concepts of comparative quantities (a deficit in “number sense”[1]). Those who argue for this more constrained definition of dyscalculia sometimes prefer to use the technical term Arithmetic Difficulties (AD) to refer to calculation and number memory deficits.
Dyscalculia is a lesser known disability, similar and potentially related to dyslexia and Developmental Dyspraxia. Dyscalculia occurs in people across the whole IQ range, and sufferers often, but not always, also have difficulties with time, measurement, and spatial reasoning. Current estimates suggest it may affect about 5% of the population. Although some researchers believe that dyscalculia necessarily implies mathematical reasoning difficulties as well as difficulties with arithmetic operations, there is evidence (especially from brain damaged patients) that arithmetic (e.g. calculation and number fact memory) and mathematical (abstract reasoning with numbers) abilities can be dissociated. That is (some researchers argue), an individual might suffer arithmetic difficulties (or dyscalculia), with no impairment of, or even giftedness in, abstract mathematical reasoning abilities.
The word dyscalculia comes from Greek and Latin which means: “counting badly”. The prefix “dys” comes from Greek and means “badly”. “Calculia” comes from the Latin “calculare”, which means “to count”. That word “calculare” again comes from “calculus”, which means “pebble” or one of the counters on an abacus.
Dyscalculia can be detected at a young age and measures can be taken to ease the problems faced by younger students. The main problem is understanding the way mathematics is taught to children. In the way that dyslexia can be dealt with by using a slightly different approach to teaching, so can dyscalculia. However, dyscalculia is the lesser known of these learning disorders and so is often not recognized.
Another common manifestation of the condition emerges when the individual is faced with equation type of problems which contain both integers and letters (3A + 4C). It can be difficult for the person to differentiate between the integers and the letters. Confusion such as reading a ‘5’ for an ‘S’ or not being able to distinguish between a zero ‘0’ for the letter ‘O’ can keep algebra from being mastered. This particular form of dyscalculia is often not diagnosed until middle or high school is entered.
- 1 Potential symptoms
- 2 Potential causes
- 3 See also
- 4 External links
- 5 Further reading
- 6 References
Potential symptoms
- Frequent difficulties with arithmetic, confusing the signs: +, −, ÷ and ×.
- Inability to tell which of two numbers is the larger.
- Reliance on ‘counting-on’ strategies, e.g., using fingers, rather than any more efficient mental arithmetic strategies.
- Difficulty with everyday tasks like checking change and reading analog clocks.
- Inability to comprehend financial planning or budgeting, sometimes even at a basic level; for example, estimating the cost of the items in a shopping basket or balancing a checkbook.
- In some severe cases, the sufferer may have very bad co-ordination, causing them to fall or trip often
- Difficulty with times-tables, mental arithmetic, etc.
- May do fairly well in subjects such as science and geometry, which require logic rather than formulas, until a higher level requiring calculations is obtained.
- Difficulty with conceptualizing time and judging the passing of time.
- Problems differentiating between left and right.
- Having a poor sense of direction (i.e., north, south, east, and west), potentially even with a compass.
- Difficulty navigating or mentally “turning” the map to face the current direction rather than the common North=Top usage.
- Having difficulty mentally estimating the measurement of an object or distance (e.g., whether something is 10 or 20 feet away).
- Inability to grasp and remember mathematical concepts, rules, formulae, and sequences.
- An inability to read a sequence of numbers, or rotating them when repeated such turning 56 into 65.
- Difficulty keeping score during games.
- Difficulty with games such as poker with more flexible rules for scoring.
- Difficulty in activities requiring sequential processing, from the physical (such as dance steps) to the abstract (reading, writing and signaling things in the right order). May have trouble even with a calculator due to difficulties in the process of feeding in variables.
- The condition may lead in extreme cases to a phobia of mathematics and mathematical devices.
Potential causes
Scientists have yet to understand the causes of dyscalculia. They have been investigating in several domains.
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- Neurological: Dyscalculia has been associated with lesions to the supramarginal and angular gyri at the junction between the temporal and parietal lobes of the cerebral cortex.[2][3]
- Deficits in working memory: Adams and Hitch[4] argue that working memory is a major factor in mental addition. From this base, Geary[5] conducted a study that suggested there was a working memory deficit for those who suffered from dyscalculia. However, working memory problems are confounded with general learning difficulties, thus Geary’s findings may not be specific to dyscalculia but rather may reflect a greater learning deficit.
Studies of mathematically gifted students have shown increased EEG activity in the right hemisphere during algorithmic computational processing. There is some evidence of right hemisphere deficits in dyscalculia.
Other causes may be:
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- Short term memory being disturbed or reduced, making it difficult to remember calculations.
- Congenital or hereditary disorders. Studies show indications of this, but the evidence is not yet concrete.[citation needed]
- A combination of these factors.
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MITIGATIVE STRATEGIES
Although dyscalculia may be difficult to diagnose, there are strategies that teachers and parents should know about to aid students in learning mathematics.
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- Encourage students to work extra hard to “visualize” mathematics problems. Draw them or have them draw a picture to help understand the problem, and make sure that they take the time to look at any visual information that is provided (picture, chart, graph, etc.)
- Have the student read problems out loud and listen very carefully. This allows them to use their auditory skills (which may be strength).
- Provide examples and try to relate problems to real-life situations.
- Provide younger students with graph paper and encourage them to use it in order to keep the numbers in line.
- Provide uncluttered worksheets so that the student is not overwhelmed by too much visual information (visual pollution). Especially on tests, allow scrap paper with lines and ample room for uncluttered computation.
- Dyscalculia students must spend extra time memorizing mathematics facts. Repetition is very important. Use rhythm or music to help memorize.
- Many students need one-on-one attention to fully grasp certain concepts. Have students work with a tutor, a parent, or a teacher after school hours in a one-on-one environment.
- If possible, allow the student to take the exam on a one-to-one basis in the teacher’s presence.
- The student might like instant answers and a chance to do the problem over once s/he is wrong. Often their mistakes are the result of “seeing” the problem wrong.
- In early stages, design the test problems “pure,” testing only the required skills. In their early learning, they must be free of large numbers and unnecessary destructive calculations.
- Allow more than the “common” time to complete problems and check to see that student is not panicking (tears in eyes, mind frozen).
- Most importantly, be PATIENT! Never forget that the student WANTS to learn and retain. Realize that mathematics can be a traumatic experience and is highly emotional because of past failures. The slightest misunderstanding or break in logic can overwhelm the student and cause emotional distress. Pity will not help, but patience and individual attention will. It is typical for students to work with until they know the material well and then get every problem wrong on the test. Then 5 minutes later, they can perform the test with just the teacher, on the chalkboard, and many times get all problems correct. Remember that this is very frustrating for the teacher/parent as well as the student. Patience is essential.
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13. Assign extra problems for practice and maybe a special TA (teaching assistant) or special education is assigned to assist the affected student.
14. When presenting new material, make sure the student with dyscalculia is able to write each step down and talk it through until they understand it well enough to teach it back to you.
15. Go over the upcoming lesson with so that the lecture is more of a review.
TECHNOLOGY AND RESOURCES
The technology for remediating and accommodating persons with mathematics disabilities has not developed as readily as the technology for reading and writing. However, the technology, which is available now, can provide beneficial assistance for some problems.
The limited technology can be of help, especially to those who have problems writing numbers down in the correct order. The most common currently available tools include the following:
- hand-held calculators that can help a learner who has problems writing numbers in the correct order;
- talking calculators that vocalize data and resulting calculations through speech synthesis;
- special-feature calculators that enable the user to select options to speak and simultaneously display numbers, functions, entire equations, and results;
- on screen computer calculator programs with speech synthesis;
- large display screens for calculators and adding machines;
- color coding for maintaining columns;
- big number buttons and large keypads;
- textbooks on CD-ROM and video-taped mathematics lessons
Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) mathematics courses (instruction targeted to special students) are being developed. These are particularly helpful to the user with learning disabilities if the learning is reinforced with voice output. Here are some computer programs that may be helpful for mathematical learning.