Hello and welcome to the What in the World is Dyscalculia podcast.
I'm your host Dr. Honora Wall and today I'm recording the podcast from the Case
Conference in Savannah, Georgia and this is a conference for special education
administrators and directors. I'm very excited to be here and I've been doing a
lot of traveling. You can probably hear that in my voice today but I really
wanted to get some thoughts out fresh from a session I just came from and I
talk about these conferences quite a bit in the podcast and the blog at the
website and I really love going to conferences because they make you think
about things in a new way, you get a lot of great information and of course the
networking is fantastic. If you're interested in seeing what's on the blog
then I'm going to send you to the educalclearning.com website that
is educalclearning.com and that is the sponsor of the podcast What in the
World is Dyscalculia and we keep a lot of information on there that can
help you if you or your child or your students have Dyscalculia the math
learning disability. Of course you can also check out the DTRI.org that's
www.the DTRI.org. Lots of great free information there as well but the
session I was in today getting back to my topic it was all about setting really
great IEP and 504 goals so this is important if you are the school staff
who's writing some of these might be your role as the teacher to help out with
this or you might be reading them and you want to know what these things mean
what you're supposed to do or if you are the school counselor, sped director or
part of that child find team. This might also be important for parents so you
know what to ask for in your IEP and 504 goals and how to tailor them to a
student with Dyscalculia and what's really helpful. So the session I was
in will probably have four or five podcasts out of this session it was
great but one thing that was talked about was when we're writing those goals
there's a big tendency to use the smart goals because those are well known but
those really come from the world of business. They can be helpful but they're
not really designed for education and that might be part of why our goals are
closed but not exactly what we want. So this session recommended a different
method and I want to pick some of this apart and bring it to you in small
chunks and I'll be directing you back to the original source so you can look at
the research for yourself and see those recommendations but one of them was
using the idea of generalizability. There's a mouthful for you. When you're
writing a goal for a student and especially when you're looking at a
target behavior or action that goal that we want to reach does it extend
outside of just their academic life or just their K-12 experience. Is it
something that can be generalized to other areas of their life? How does that
apply to Dyscalculia? Well one of the goals that I like to include when I'm
helping people draft 504 or IEP goals or when I'm talking with the team I like
to talk about the idea of addressing and including support tools. Now if you have
a younger student that might be a 1-100 chart or the multiplication list. If you
have older students it might be guided notes, reference sheet and then as we
get older calculator whatever is appropriate for the grade level but I
like to write in the goal that the student is going to demonstrate appropriate
use of their tools 85% of the time. Why is that language important? It's
important because first of all we know that when students do not use the right
support tool then the numeracy gets in the way of them understanding and
mastering the other math concepts we're trying to teach so we have to remove
that barrier of basic facts memorization. We know that's not good for
students with Dyscalculia and we need to address that using the tools so we
want to have that included in there and we want to label and name specifically
what tools are best for different grade levels. The second piece about that is we
want to have something measurable we want to say is the student using the tool
because offering and using are very different things and making sure a student
is using them might mean you need to do a little training on how to use the tool
properly and then use some scaffolding watch the student make sure they're
using it appropriately and then make sure they're doing it independently. That's
something we can track so we can measure are they doing it 85% of the time or 80
or 90 whatever percentage you like to put with your goals but that's something
we can really see it's very hard to measure an increase in math mathematical
fluency or an increase in math understanding because that's something
internal that's a subjective thought but whether or not we're using the tools
we're supposed to when we're supposed to that is something we can track and now
we can measure. We know that when students use their tools appropriately of
course we have now supported the numeracy piece and we expect that they are
going to do a better job of completing their work in a timely fashion completing
it with precision showing mastery over a concept so when they're using the tool
now our assessments are truly measuring that mathematical thinking rather than
measuring their learning disability which impacts their ability to retain
basic facts so that's another reason why it's really important. A third reason why
I really like putting a goal this way goes back to this idea of generalizability.
If we are training students to find their appropriate tool learn how to use
them and use them consistently then we are giving that piece of that work that
mastery component to the student that is now their job. They can find their
fluency and their mastery and their precision by finding and using the right
tool. The work is on them rather than on the teacher for that intervention piece
because we have other things we should be intervening on using the support tool
for numeracy is not where our time is best spent but also the idea of knowing
that you can find tools and resources knowing you can be successful with the
right support making sure you find the right support and then using that for
your own benefit. Well that is something that's important in every area of our
lives. It doesn't matter if it relates specifically to our math learning
disability or not that's just a good idea to know that you can be successful
independently. If any of you are taking training and growth mindset or you read
Carol Dweck's book this speaks directly to that same idea giving students the
awareness the knowledge the confidence that they can be successful and they
need to find the right way to be successful and use that method repeatedly
until they get the success that they're looking for. So isn't that amazing? Look at
all of these benefits we can get just from one 504 or IEP goal that's written
very clearly and specifically. Something that is measurable, something that's an
action item we can see, something that puts the work onto the student that's
really going to increase their self-confidence. It's a great tool for
internal motivation and we can see whether or not that is having an impact
on their mathematical achievement. I mean what a win all from one simple goal. So I
know it can be tricky writing these IEP and 504 goals in a way that meets
everyone's desires. Something that works great for the student, something that's
beneficial for the family, something that's not overwhelming for the teacher,
something that transfers from one school or school district or state to the other,
something that can be applied in many different areas of our lives. But it's
possible and we can do it with just a few small tweaks. So when you're writing
goals, when you're reviewing the goals in your students plan, you want to look for
things that okay I understand exactly what this goal says. I understand exactly
what needs to happen to make this goal achievable. I understand exactly how to
measure whether this tool and this goal is being used. If it's being reached, how
close are we to reaching it? Did we surpass it? I can tell you that if you're
using the right tool, then students with dyscalculia are going to surpass every
single goal you can write down. It's really amazing and it's going to happen
very quickly. So to wrap up, spend some time learning more about how to write
great IEP and 504 goals and get away from just the idea of the smart outline. I
know it's pushed a lot and people are really familiar with it and that's what
you're hearing a lot in your trainings. But get a little deeper, be really
specific and be unique in the sense that you're not using a template, you're
really thinking about the child and what's going to benefit them because it
relates specifically to their learning differences. If you can also make it
something that benefits them in other areas of their lives, now you're knocking
it out of the park. So this information came from a session that was led by
David Bateman and Lisa Goran and they were really fantastic. David Bateman is
with the American Institute for Research and Lisa Goran is with the University
of Missouri and I will be getting some more information from them and the
research that they used and cited in their session. I'll be putting that on
to longer blog posts on educalclearning.com sharing a lot of those links on
the DTRI.org so that you can go do your own research and find out what else they
talked about and what else was included. And if you're not already signing up for
conferences, get out there and go network and get some of this great
information. It's really very beneficial. It's going to change what you do back at
work and it's also a fun time except for all the travel is probably going to
wreck your throat. So bring some throat coat T or your favorite cough drop. Okay
that's all for today. This is Dr. Honora Wall and I thank you for listening to
what in the world is Dyscalculia. I love to hear your thoughts and comments
and ideas for future podcasts. We're using those as we look at the end of
season three and what we might put in place for season four. Bringing some
other guests in to talk about some different things and bring you more
resources that you can use right away to help your students who have the math
learning disability. If you need more information go to educalclearning.com
or the DTRI.org. Email me Honora at educalclearning.com or Honora at the
DTRI.org. Find me online, find me on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube, find our
teachers Dyscalculia support group on Facebook. It's a public site and it's
growing. It's really very exciting. We're sharing a lot of information and ideas
and resources together on that site and look for me at a conference. I'd love to
say hi in person. Thanks for listening.