Hello everyone and welcome again to the What in the World is Dyscalculia podcast.
I'm Dr. Honora Wall, your host for the podcast and the show is sponsored by
EduCalc Learning. You've probably already been to visit
educalclearning.com to get a lot of information, resources, and advice about
the math learning disability. If you have not, you really should get over there.
Or you can visit the DTRI.org. Make sure you grab the free brochures and
infographics on there that you can share with colleagues, teachers, admin,
friends, family, or students who have dyscalculia. It can also help you decide
whether or not dyscalculia is the right terminology, diagnosis, name for your
math difficulties. But then different types of math difficulties aside. That's
another podcast. Today's episode I want to talk about something that came up in
a session at the case conference, which I am enjoying very much, and that is
talking again in the world of accommodations. And in the world of
goal writing for IEPs and 504s. In the last episode I talked about generalizability
the importance of a goal that's written to impact multiple areas of a person's
life. And today I want to talk about the idea of having those goals be written
for appropriate achievement levels. Without going too far down the rabbit hole.
The quick way to understand this topic is to know that the goals that are written
in an IEP or a 504 document are supposed to help outline exactly what we're
going to do to help students support their learning challenges and how we're
going to measure and address what worked and how effective they were. We also put
into those goals what we expect a student to be able to do by the end of a
school year after certain interventions and accommodations have been put into
place. And in the last session I was in there was a lot of discussion about that.
Namely the idea of when we write those goals related to academic achievement
and progress, what is achievable? What's happened in the past in a lot of states
and has led to quite a few lawsuits is that the goals were not challenging
enough and especially if you're working with SLDs, the specific learning
disorders, any kind of neurodivergence. But listen people, it's true for people
with any learning disability. We tend to give goals that are just not appropriate
because they are not challenging and they don't help students get to grade level
and beyond and that is really what we're supposed to be doing. Well that always
brings into the conversation the very legitimate question how exactly do we do
that especially for students who are two sometimes three grade levels behind
their peers. How do we help a student who needs to learn fifth grade math let's
say who still doesn't have basic adding and subtracting or multiplying and
dividing facts memorized and how do we write a goal for grade level content
when we have these gaps in those foundational pieces. So the quick answer
is write the academically challenging goal students should and could be doing
grade level work period end of conversation and I see this happen over
and over I've seen it for years I'm telling you it is proven to be true
that students with dyscalculia can do grade level work. Here's how you're
going to do it. You've heard me talk a lot about using support tools for your
accommodations depending on grade level using a 1 to 100's chart using a times
tables list the old-fashioned multiplication list if your student has
really strong visual spatial skills and you want to give them the multiplication
chart go right ahead but make sure you use what's best for that student and
then especially in fifth grade and beyond training students how to use their
calculator requiring them to use it for precision and accuracy and using it for
those parts and pieces of a problem you don't need to put 1.37 times 2.89 in a
calculator and just get a final answer. You can show the student how to use the
standard algorithm for multiplying starting with the ones place and then
doing all the multiplication next line and a zero start with the tens place you
can do each of those individual parts with a calculator or with the
multiplication list that's going to help the student focus on grade level work
without being inhibited or impaired by the challenge of their learning
disability which with dyscalculia makes their mind literally lose math
information once they've learned it so that piece of fluency and automaticity
can be very hard the parietal lobe is working against the student so you
support that part with that accommodation now you can have grade level
conversations about perimeter area volume working with formulas understanding
word problems because we've removed the piece that's the actual struggle once
you remove that piece now we're doing grade level work I can assure you because
I've seen it with almost all of my students I would say all to some degree
when you require precision and require checking they work immediately hey we
need to multiply nine times eight grab that list or grab your calculator put in
nine times eight tell me what you get look up the nines on that multiplication
list find nine times eight tell me what it says now you're only having exposure
to the right answer that's the only thing the brain can code it's the only
neurological connection that can be formed you're not having the student
guess you're not having them do the work without checking because now we have no
idea what went wrong and what went right the brain doesn't know what to
confirm or deny now we have a train wreck so use those tools you will find that
fluency can increase over time does that mean your student with dyscalculia is
going to memorize all of the basic facts and know them forever probably not but
there are times I got to stop and think about nine times eight myself and I
don't have dyscalculia I have a brain that's full of lots of other knowledge
and sometimes those math facts float around in the back and it takes a minute
so for any student using these accommodations can increase fluency
and increase performance and achievement in turn that increases
engagement that increases mastery that increases self-confidence and our math
identity etc etc all of those trending keywords that we talk about so much in
education it can all be done by using the right accommodation put that into
your IEP goals that you're going to track if the student uses their tools
appropriately and with consistency 85% of the time they're going to see the
results of that work and they're going to continue because now they want to be
precise and when that pressure is off now they can engage with you in the
conceptual understanding and in the new vocabulary of the grade level work so
quick and easy way get everybody doing grade level work put it into your IEP
and 504 goals and go ahead and make them academically challenging because these
students are capable of it and they wish someone would show them exactly what to
do so that they can show you exactly what they are capable of if you want more
information about that visit either website
educalclearning.com or the DTRI.org or email me Honora H-O-N-O-R-A
at either of those educalc learning.com or the DTRI.org thank you
very much for listening to the what in the world is Dyscalculia podcast I'm
going to hop into another session at this great conference and bring you some
new information in the next episode see you then