Hello and welcome to this newest edition of What In The World is Dyscalculia.
The podcast all about the math learning disability.
This podcast is sponsored by EduCalc Learning and I'm your host, Dr. Honora Wall.
If you've listened to our podcast in the past, you know that I had begun the podcast
originally using the term the way I heard it the way I first had my training in
Now to be phonetically proper, the correct pronunciation is Dys-cal-COOL-ia.
And we did talk about that in the very first podcast.
I still maintain that in whichever accent you use whichever emphasis on the syllables
and however you get those vowel sounds out.
As long as we're talking about the math learning disability, I am a happy person.
However, when you know better you do better and since Dyscalculia is the technically
correct term, we're going to start using that more frequently in the podcast.
Now I might slip up because certainly the first few years of my training, I only heard people
saying Discalc-Yulia.
Of course, a difference in pronunciation is only one of the many, many different misconceptions
and misunderstandings about the math learning disability.
And that's what we try to clear up in these podcasts.
But today I want to talk a little bit about something exciting as we start another new school
year.
There are a lot of interesting things going on out there that I'd like to make you aware of.
One of course is the non-profit that I recently opened, the Dyscalculia
training and research institute.
The website for that is www.thedtri.org.
And hopefully you can check us out and we'll be expanding that website, putting more information
and links and research and really focusing on the awareness piece through that 501c3.
In the near future, as we start taking funds and doing fundraising, getting donations for
that, those donations will be going towards printing, creating and distributing brochures
and pamphlets to psychologists, especially school, psychologists, school guidance counselors,
so that school administrators, teachers, parents and students have some ready access to
frequently asked questions and information about Dyscalculia and what it looks like in
the classroom and how to best support students who have this learning disability.
And then of course I really want to expand a lot into the field of supporting adults who
have this math learning disability and are looking for resources of their own.
So those are some exciting things we'll be doing in this upcoming year.
Another thing I'm very excited about is the online math courses that EduCalc Learning
is putting out that are designed for people with Dyscalculia.
So the accommodations, interventions, the increased scaffolding, training and how to use
the right support tools, the direct instruction.
All of that is built into the program by design.
And right now we have a fifth grade, an algebra 2, and a personal financial literacy available.
And we're building out more grade levels.
And you can find out more at educalclearning.com or email me, honora at educalclearning.com.
But not only exciting things in house, there's a lot of exciting things in the broader
community.
And one of those exciting things is the increased awareness and interest in Dyscalculia
I've had a lot of people email me and reach out and we're having very interesting conversations
about Dyscalculia, how it intersects with the field of gifted students, how visual
spatial skills in all areas can help students who have Dyscalculia, where those things
overlap and how having strong visual spatial skills certainly makes overcoming the challenge
is of Dyscalculia much easier.
And that doesn't mean that you have to have strong visual spatial skills.
It just means that if a student has weaker visual spatial skills or working memory, if you're
looking at a neuropsych evaluation, you want to look at visual spatial skills, working
memory skills and executive function skills.
And the stronger those areas are, the faster the accommodations are going to make sense and
the more success a student is going to have, quickly.
And if we have lower skills in those areas, then we just want to add in a few more accommodations
especially extended time, especially direct instruction and avoiding some of the problem-solving
lessons or the problem-based learning which is very popular in education right now.
Nothing wrong with problem-based learning and discovery-based learning.
Those are great tools that we have to get students engaged and excited.
However, for neurodiverse students sometimes that discovery piece can be a little more
difficult because what are you supposed to discover and how do you know if you found
it?
So for educators, if you're using a lot of those types of lessons, make sure you're doing
bridge building with students who have learning challenges because they might not be building
the bridge you want on their own or they might not be sure what kind of bridge they're
supposed to be building in their knowledge as they're doing this discovery-based learning.
So just help them out.
But it's great to have these conversations I've had people ask for the links to different
research articles I talk about in the podcast.
I'm happy to share those with you.
If you have a copy of my book teaching students with Dyscalculia, there's tons of references
in the back of that book.
You can get that at Amazon or at your local bookstore, definitely support your local book
stores, especially the independent bookstore owners.
You can also get it on Kindle and still have access to all of those references or reach
out to me and I'm happy to share them with you.
I also had a really great conversation with Dr. Sandra Elliott at TouchMath and many of
you are probably familiar with the TouchMath program.
And if you visit their website, they're going to explain their work much better than
I can.
But basically TouchMath is a way to support the understanding of numeracy to support counting
and adding skills and to use a tactile interaction basically to strengthen that.
And we know that counting on fingers and using our fingers to count and having that tactile
touch-based process while we're counting and thinking about numbers is shown to increase
neurological connections and understanding and strengthen numeracy.
Dr. Elliott and I had a great conversation about Dyscalculia, about the growing interest
across the K-12 landscape, and how we can support each other in getting more information
out there.
One of their new products, I guess we could say, it is free.
So I hate to call it a product, but one of their things they have on the market is a
screener for Dyscalculia.
And I want to talk about that for a minute.
I will tell you I'm not affiliated with TouchMath if you go to the website I'm about to
give you or go to TouchMath itself.
There's no kickback, this is not an affiliate link.
Just colleagues sharing information.
We both have the same angle, which is to bring more awareness and more support to people
who have Dyscalculia.
So in that vein, I want to share this Dyscalculia screener because I really enjoyed
it.
And I think it's a great tool for people who suspect they are their children or their students.
Might have Dyscalculia.
You can take it at any age.
And it is quick, it's free, and then you get an emailed report about some strengths and
weaknesses and key indicators that may or may not suggest Dyscalculia for you.
So the website for that is HTTPS://
That's a pretty normal setup.
And the name of the website is D as in Dyscalculia.
y
SC.
So dysc
Test.
T-E-S-T dot com.
So sort of a shortened version of Dyscalculia.
dysctestcom.
D-Y-S-C test.
And again that's not an affiliate, but just go check it out.
You can really help you understand yourself or your students a little more completely
in some different areas of number, sense, and basic fact recognition and whether or not
there is an indication that further testing should be done.
I know a lot of people struggle with getting referrals for evaluations.
And our public schools in the US are responsible for that initial testing and screening
for learning disabilities.
Beyond the law, and that is federal law, but beyond that, there's also resource allocation
and it can be difficult for a lot of public schools systems to support the cost of screening
and then testing.
And as in many fields, we have a shortage of people trained and able to deliver and read these
evaluations.
A neuropsychic eval is not something that can be done by anyone.
You have to be a trained individual and the people who administer and interpret those tests
go through a lot of training.
They really know what they're doing and it's specific information, which is why those
evaluations are so great.
I love reading the neuropsych evals because they give a ton of information that help
us support students quickly and effectively.
But if you're having trouble getting to that stage, maybe your school is still looking
at some early interventions, maybe you're in a response to an intervention program, or maybe
your idea of there being an issue is different from the school or teachers idea of whether
or not there's an issue, taking a screener like this free one that the people at touch
math developed can help you have some information.
You can then take back to the school and make a stronger case for having an evaluation.
Or you might get a report back that says they're not indicators of Dyscalculia and
then you can make some decisions based on that.
Not only not every struggling math student has a learning disability, Dyscalculia is
very specific and we know it affects somewhere between 8 and 12.
I like to shoot for 10% of the population.
But that means there's about 90% of the population who do not have a learning disability,
even though we know that if we're lucky, half of our students are actually passing that
and advanced or even competent math level.
So we know a lot of people struggle, but there's a lot of different reasons for it.
And finding out more information about what the problem could be will help you and your
school or as a teacher help you in your class get the best resources and support.
The other good news in that conversation is that when you look at the appropriate accommodations
and interventions for Dyscalculia, they're going to help everybody.
So if you're a teacher and you're trying to figure out how to help your struggling students,
you don't have to keep reinventing the wheel or have a number of different activities.
If you can extend the use of a 100-chart, work more with a number line, allow students
to use a calculator and have worked examples, help them to develop a system of notes or
a reference sheet that makes sense to them and use those during classwork homework quizzes,
and if they have a learning disability, also on a test, if you'll put in those accommodations
and use more direct instruction as your intervention, then everyone is going to get better
at math and that rising tide will lift all ships.
Your difference is that people who do not have a learning disability are going to naturally
move away from those accommodations and interventions.
Whereas the people who have Dyscalculia are going to need those accommodations, the
same way, people who wear glasses continue to wear glasses.
You don't wear glasses for two years and then suddenly you're near or far-sightedness
has fixed itself.
You just wear glasses and it's really not a big deal.
The accommodating students with the learning disability of any kind is also not a big deal.
I hope that in this new school year we have a lot more conversations about this, we have
a lot more awareness and shared information.
I hope we have a lot more classrooms using these accommodations.
Even if you do not use the same accommodations at your end of your state mandated testing,
I can tell you from personal experience, I've seen this numerous times.
You use the right accommodations and interventions and raise everyone's understanding
throughout the school year.
Those test scores are going to go up at the end of the year.
You will see those increases in annual progress that we're all looking for in the classroom.
If you have questions about any of the things I've talked about today, the Dyscalculia
Training and Research Institute as a nonprofit, if you'd like
to help us get more information into the hands of school psychologists and school counselors,
please visit thedtri.org or email me.
If you have information that you need to know, I'm happy to answer questions.
If you're interested in what we're doing with our math courses which can be used in classrooms,
I do have some classrooms at private schools and online academies who are using these
courses in giving students credit for them.
I'm happy to share the curriculum with you.
If you have questions about that Dyscalculia Screener, check out DyscTest.com that's
dySC or look into touch math for more information on that program.
Let's have a great school year.
I'm really excited for the things that are coming up.
I think we're all going to have a great time supporting people of all ages with the
math learning disability.
Thank you for listening.
This is Dr. Honora Wall and you're listening to the what in the world is Dyscalculia
Podcast.
See you soon.