Hello and welcome to this episode of What in
the World is Dyscalculia. I'm Dr. Honora Wall
and I'm the host of this podcast which is sponsored
by Educalc Learning and if you visit EducalcLearning
.com you can find lots of information about the
training we have for teachers and the services
and programs we have for students. You can also
visit the Dyscalculia Training and Research Institute
at www .thedtri .org for a lot of free information
and information about our brand new program NBD
math and I'll talk about that at the end of the
podcast because I really want to get into our
topic today which I'm calling the Goldilocks
problem of Dyscalculia and that is when A student
is getting some kind of support at school but
it's not exactly the right kind. It's a little
too hot or a little too cold, a little too hard
or a little too soft. It's just not quite right.
And we're looking for that Goldilocks effect
where we get the right kind of support with the
right kind of accommodations and the student
can succeed. Now, if you've been listening to
the podcast or if you've tried any of the accommodations
we recommend or you've been to our trainings,
you know that I've found for close to a decade
now, once we get the support for Discount Coolia
right, students can succeed very, very quickly.
The difference between Discount Coolia, the math
learning disability, and let's say low numeracy
or a weak math foundation is a student who does
not have a math learning disability will move
away from needing accommodations. And a student
who has the learning disability is going to continue
to need accommodations. It's really the difference
between being a person who wears readers because
your eyes are a little older like mine or you
just need help every once in a while with small
print versus someone who has either nearsightedness
or farsightedness and always needs prescription
glasses. It's not a deficit or a terrible problem
that impacts your life. You just need the right
prescription and then you can see just fine.
Same thing holds true for dyscalculia. So why
don't we always get the support right? Well,
that's a great question with a complex answer,
but I'm going to give you some of my thoughts
and we'll open this conversation. If you have
questions or comments about the conversation,
I'd love to hear them. You can comment on my
socials. I'm on most social media sites. or you
can find my YouTube channel and leave some comments
there or email me and I'd love to hear your thoughts.
But what tends to happen is a couple of very
common issues. The first is that we have a student
who might have dyscalculia but maybe they don't
have an official diagnosis so then it becomes
difficult to get accommodations because they
don't have the paperwork that makes it legally
required and that's a really big issue which
we've discussed in podcasts before and in that
case sometimes you have a teacher who will give
some help in the classroom regardless of the
paperwork situation kudos to those teachers accommodations
are free, and you don't have to wait for approval
from someone else. You can just support your
students today. If they have suspected dyscalculia,
that support is going to include number lines,
one -to -one hundreds chart, a multiplication
list, having notes with them during their assessments
to trigger their memory so they can keep track
of their work. And you're going to see some really
great benefits from that. Sometimes when we don't
have the right kind of paperwork a teacher isn't
sure what to do and they want to try some different
interventions and see if they can Make that needle
move for the student and get some increased math
performance That's a harder conversation and
I would encourage you to share some research
studies and some websites like the two I've mentioned
mine or understood org or Learning Disabilities
Association of America. There's some great information
out there and let's increase awareness on that
end. So in those cases we don't always get support
and that's where we don't have enough. Another
situation is when we have paperwork or we have
a teacher who wants to be involved and wants
to help but they're not quite giving the right
kind of accommodations. So we're not seeing students
improve their performance. And that's a really
great indicator of whether or not you're offering
support that's appropriate for dyscalculia. If
you're giving interventions and accommodations
and we're not seeing progress, we're probably
not doing the right thing. So we want to tweak
that. We might be giving extended time. We might
be giving more interventions, but not accommodations,
especially during assessments. That's never going
to help a student with dyscalculia. We might
be giving things that are appropriate for different
issues. If you're giving appropriate accommodations
for dyslexia or dysgraphia to a student with
dyscalculia, you're not going to see very much
improvement, definitely not over the long -term.
You might see a few spikes of performance increase.
You might see some short -term gains, but you're
not going to see a lot of long -term improvement.
And that's because dyslexia and dyscalculia are
very different. Sometimes they can be comorbid,
they can occur at the same time, or there might
be some slight overlap in issues, but they're
completely different. types of neurodivergence
so what helps with one does not help with the
other so in those cases we have accommodations
but it's too hard they're not the right kinds
and therefore we're not getting the right kind
of help so what do we do well we keep having
conversations with our teachers with our school
counselors we bring them some more information
and we ask them to try the accommodations recommended
for Discount Coolio. Sometimes schools are on
board and they're willing to do whatever it takes
to experiment on their own and see what helps
a student and then we get a lot more buy -in
because the teacher can see that now performance
is matching the students abilities, it's matching
their effort because we're actually seeing the
assessments increase. Sometimes that's not the
case and we have a harder conversation. We have
to just keep raising awareness and we have to
keep spreading the recommendations for the right
kinds of accommodations. And you can do that
through the resources I've already talked about
or encouraging teachers and schools to look up
the research on their own. Go to Google Scholar
and look up research studies from Brian Butterworth.
There's a lot of researchers out there who have
a lot of information that tells us what we should
be doing for students with dyscalculia and why.
So the more we have these conversations and share
this information, the more we're going to see
some growth. that I'm giving you good information.
Well, some of it comes from those research studies
and others. I read research articles all the
time. And a lot of it comes from many, many years
of experience teaching, tutoring, and supporting
students with dyscalculia, making recommended
accommodations, and then hearing back from families
what has worked and what has not for their students.
We do know what works. Here's some of the reasons
why. People with dyscalculia have slightly different
brain wiring in that parietal lobe, which is
where we store our math knowledge. Of course,
the human brain is very complex, and we can store
knowledge in more than one area or region, which
is my multi -sensory instruction, is so beneficial.
But we do know the parietal lobe loses math information
over time for people with dyscalculia. We also
know that they tend to have a weaker or non -existent
mental number line, which is why number sense
is really tricky. Counting on is really tricky.
Remembering facts, in fact families, in fact
fluency, very tricky. That all comes down to
their particular type of neurodivergence. So
we use those external tools to support the weaker
wiring. And of course we can do interventions
and other activities to strengthen those connections.
However, from a pragmatic point of view, if there's
a test Friday, if there's a report card grade
we have to pass this class, if there are graduation
requirements, in those cases I'm a much bigger
fan of using accommodations to make sure we reach
those mastery goals and we're showing math performance
and we're not using external barriers that work
against students with dyscalculia. So when the
support is right, then we see the growth. A lot
of that growth is long -term also. When I work
with students and we have the right kind of support
in place and we can keep that support year after
year, Then, over time, they require less help
because they're learning how they learn. They're
learning their strengths and weaknesses, and
they're maintaining that growth over time. But
the minute we take those accommodations away,
we lose ground. The same way if someone came
up to you and said, hey, you've been wearing
those reading glasses for a couple years now.
I think that's long enough, don't you? And you
take their glasses away. they're going to go
right back to having a very hard time reading
text because we haven't fixed their vision. We've
simply taken away the external tool that allows
them to see better. So I hope this podcast helps
you have some conversations with teachers or
administrators who might be trying some things,
but they're just trying some methods that aren't
really designed appropriately for this population.
And that's why they're not helping. As educators,
we want children to succeed. And as math educators,
we certainly want them to enjoy or at least be
able to do math well. And hopefully after doing
it well, we can get some more enjoyment in there.
That's a personal decision if you like math or
not. I'm not here to sell you on math as a topic,
but I am here to say, no matter why you're currently
struggling, you can succeed. And no matter why
your students are struggling, we can find ways
to help them succeed. A lot of that comes from
properly supporting dyscalculia. And if you do
that right, then all your students are going
to benefit. If they did not actually have the
math learning disability, they will move away
from those accommodations sooner, have a stronger
math foundation, and go along their merry way.
If they do have the math learning disability,
they're going to learn more about how to support
themselves, and with your help and the right
accommodations, they're going to do just fine.
I'm Dr. Honora Wall, and I really appreciate
you listening to What in the World is dyscalculia
? I'd love to hear your questions, comments,
concerns and your ideas for future podcast episodes.
Thanks for listening.