Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of What in the World is Dyscalculia.
I'm your host Dr. Honora Wall and this podcast is produced and sponsored by Educalc Learning.
You can find out more at educalclearning.com and be sure you visit www.thedtri.org also
to get more information about Dyscalculia.
And I want to talk about a research article today.
This was a research study conducted by Shaylev and Gross-Tsur titled Developmental Dyscalculia.
I'll be putting this on the DTRI.org website so you can read the full PDF and read the
full study for yourself if you're interested in research the way I am.
If you're not it might be a little dry so let me recap it for you.
Basically the study was looking at different research that's published about people with
Dyscalculia and what are some of the signs and symptoms and what do we see across the
lifespan.
So if you've been listening to our podcast for a while this information will not surprise
you but if you're brand new it might be something that you don't know or you haven't heard before.
The first thing they talked about in the article is the fact that I've read this in many different
places if you've read anything about neuroscience or just math in general you know this to be
true already.
Reading is something we have to teach.
We are not born knowing how to read.
and alphabets, those are things we create and then we teach each other how to use them.
So this is important because there is such a tendency for people to say oh it's the number
dyslexia.
No my friend it is not.
Please take that out of your vocabulary.
There's also a big movement for a lot of programs that are based in dyslexia research or reading
based programs.
Now on the one hand I think any program that is working for you your children your students
keep using it because if it works don't mess with it and if it is not working then there
are probably some reasons why.
You might be fixing the reading based issues.
You might have a person who's comorbid more than one specific learning disorder or it
might just be that you're helping to clear things up and that's what's making the improvement.
However if you look at fMRIs you look at the types of symptoms and you start to dig into
the causes you're going to see that dyscalculia is completely different from dyslexia.
Math is an intuitive natural process.
You wouldn't know it if you're in a K-12 system especially here in America.
You would be very surprised however all people all over the world from the dawn of time have
counted have organized have classified have separated things have dealt with quantity.
Even before we were using bartering systems or developing economies we were still counting
and even if you go to very remote tribes if you can still find some in the world today
we can still find people who count.
A lot of times you'll find groups of tribal groups of people and then we've discovered
in the Amazon jungles things like this where there's not a lot of interaction with what
we like to call the developed world where we find people who are counting to one two three many
because above four it's rather collective and we didn't really need to differentiate
we're still counting we're still sorting and we're still using the idea of more and less
and the idea of grouping things that is a natural part of the human condition.
Why is this important?
Well when we're looking at a learning difference when we're looking at dyslexia versus dyscalculia
dyscalculia has different causes there's some kind of wiring or coding or maybe it's a blend
the research is still unclear because we need to do more studies but there's something different
that's interrupting this very natural human process and I think that makes a real big
difference in the types of interventions and accommodations that we use and our approach
can be a little more refined when we're talking about dyscalculia which is the math related
learning disability it is not number dyslexia although I know that is a popular term mostly
because so many people have heard of dyslexia so if you're speaking with someone who's never
heard of dyscalculia it can give a frame of reference and I totally get that but they
are very different issues.
So that was the first thing that really caught my eye in this research article and another
thing that this particular article focused on was the early elementary experience and
really going up to fifth and sixth grade this is where a lot of research has been done for
dyscalculia we need so much more for older students especially high school and adults
just really have a lack there and hopefully that will change soon but what we do know
is that when you look at the elementary experience up to about fifth or sixth grade you're seeing
students who are using ineffective or insufficient strategies for their counting and so adding,
subtracting, multiplying it's taking them forever they're still counting on their fingers
and that's embarrassing also the older student gets the more they try to hide those strategies
and that's one of the reasons the many reasons why I highly recommend you let students use
a 1 to 100's chart a multiplication list once you get into fifth grade start introducing
that calculator on occasion by your topic and then in middle and high school we have
moved on to other things use the calculator use a list of all the common square roots
and cubed roots so people can refer to these outside sources that way they can keep up
with the rest of your lesson and that is what this research article really talked about
the problem with using insufficient strategies not being able to rely on memorization for
basic facts that takes up so much time it also takes up a ton of mental energy your
brain is exhausted so trying to keep up with the lesson trying to learn the new vocabulary
trying to focus on the difference between perimeter and area and when you use those formulas
understanding what a formula is and substituting digits for letters so you can work with a
formula don't even get me started on working backwards if you know the area and you have
to move backwards to the given side all of those other things that we want students to
focus on they're having a hard time holding that in short term memory and moving it into
long term memory and keeping up with what's going on because they're still trying to figure
out the adding and getting to the right answer so we see a lot of errors as students are
getting older we know they have some kind of issue we may or may not have a diagnosis
but we know that they don't have the memory that gives them a boost that's an important
thing to think about for students who do not have dyscalculia who are memorizing like the
dickens and they've got tons of basic facts at their disposal their brain is using that
internal mental number line and those memorized facts as an internal tool but they're not
doing something super special or something super different and here's my analogy for
that if a person needs to wear eyeglasses this is an external tool that helps them to
be able to see clearly when you can see clearly you're more likely to read completely and
without errors when you read fluently without errors you're more likely to have a better
reading comprehension so do you see where I'm going with this a person who does not wear
eyeglasses is still doing the same reading the same fluency work the same comprehension
but they have an internal system that's doing a lot of work for them and if a person is
near-sighted far-sighted a little older like me if I don't bring my readers out with me
I'm going to have a hard time we need an external tool to help that process once we have it
then we can read we can read fluently we can read with great comprehension so the accommodation
can be the barrier or the thing that removes the barrier very important to keep that in
mind so for students with dyscalculia we're going to see those insufficient strategies
that are not helping them out but they should be doing grade level work these are students
who have average to above average IQs they're not behavior problems they need to be in a
gen ed classroom and they're perfectly capable of keeping up if they have the right accommodations
and since those counting strategies and the memorization tools are not as strong we need
to give them some help in that area when we don't we're going to see a lot of little
errors we're going to see that they're so close to having the right answer but it's
a little off and we're going to see that the work of computation and performing those four
basic operations is so intense that these students are exhausted mentally by the time
we try to get to the vocabulary the concepts the higher level math problems we want them
to do so keep that in mind keep an eye on the classroom do people seem like they're
dropping off there they're losing pace they're getting frustrated easily there are two questions
behind because they haven't kept up with the numbers then you're going to see students
really disengage and give up because they don't feel like they can get there from here part
of our job in the classroom is to help students get there from here and we can do that easily
with those external tools that again if you've been listening to the show you know I love
to talk about them one to one hundredth chart number lines multiplication lists later on
a calculator worked examples having some notes that make sense to the student and letting
them have that while they're taking their assessments the same way you would let your
students wear their eyeglasses when they take their assessments not really a big difference
there okay so to wrap up the developmental dyscalculia article by Shay live in gross
sewer reading is a natural process for most people after they're taught how to do it but
they're not just born understanding any alphabet and how to read it math is a natural process
that's happening on its own counting sorting organizing more or less develops without any
prompting or instruction from us we use that basis to uncover the rest of the very interesting
things that we know about upper level math concepts so therefore since these are very
different things we do that come from very different places and involve different parts
of the brain we want to address issues with different interventions accommodations strategies
and support you're really going to see the worst of the dyscalculia impact in elementary
school and some things like that dyscalculia trifecta time money place value they can remain
a problem even into adulthood but you're going to find that other upper level math concepts
are much easier because now we're requiring calculators so upper level math gets to be
much more accessible for students with dyscalculia well there's a lot more to say about the math
learning disability and we'll keep diving into it in our podcast throughout the year
if you have questions or comments please find me on social media you can find educalc
learning or the dyscalculia training and research institute on Facebook LinkedIn Tiktok here
on the podcast you can visit the websites www.educalclearning.com or www.thedtri.org and make sure you check
out our books you can get your copy of teaching students with dyscalculia in English or in
Spanish at your local bookstore through Amazon or on the website you can get your box of
the teachers dyscalculia toolbox that's out there there's some other books out there especially
like ah-ha! games for the brain for classroom activities and if you just have some questions
email me and I'm happy to get some information to you and help you support your students
I'm Dr. Honora Wall this is the what in the world is dyscalculia podcast thanks for listening.