Hello, hello, welcome to the What In The World is Dyscalculia podcast.
I'm your host, Honora Wall, and today I want to talk about what I call the Dyscalculia
Trifecta, time, money, and place value.
These concepts plague people with Dyscalculia for their whole lives.
They're just really tough.
And in elementary school, what do you do in second, third, and fourth grade?
Learn about time, learn about money, and learn about place value.
So elementary school ends up being a very difficult time for students with this specific
learning disorder.
It's also a really tough time for their teachers who are using every instructional strategy
they can think of and not seeing a lot of results during assessments.
And for parents who are really worried, especially if this is your oldest child, having these
difficulties in early elementary school is very unsettling.
You're not sure what this means for your student.
It's also hard for the students themselves who are really just defining themselves as
mathematicians, defining themselves as students.
They're trying so hard, the work ethic with this population of students is unparalleled.
And they're just being frustrated at every turn.
And this is very demoralizing.
So we start to see, by fourth grade, students who are giving up on math, students who are
giving up on themselves as learners.
Students who are giving up on mastering things that seem so easy and so commonly used.
We talk about time all day and all night.
We use money, even though most of us are using plastic these days.
We still talk about how much things cost.
And in the math class, we use place value for expanded form, for working with decimals,
for understanding quantity.
So early elementary can be a really difficult time because of this dyscalculia trifecta.
The funny thing is once you break away from elementary school math, once you get into
middle school math and certainly high school math, nobody's asking you to tell time on
a clock.
That's not a question that comes up at all.
And no one is asking you to make change or to think about money.
Even when we deal with percent of change problems, those are proportions.
We usually use whole numbers.
You may use decimals in some of your algebra or geometry questions.
But most of the time, we want students to focus on the concept.
So we move away from decimals and fractions.
And we save those for extension questions once the content has been mastered.
So a lot of the topics that are holding back students in early elementary, that kind of
second, third, fourth grade levels, they go away.
And we're left with students who no longer believe they can succeed in math class, even
though the expectations are much more aligned with where they can be successful.
So it's interesting.
The dyscalculia trifecta stands in the way of students becoming great math students.
And then it goes away.
And we're left with students who don't believe they can outperform their past math experiences.
So if you are a student with dyscalculia or the parent of a student with dyscalculia and
you're experiencing this, I want you to know that math gets better and that your ability
to succeed in math is going to be a lot easier.
So if you can hold out for middle and high school math, I think you're going to have
a much easier time with those topics.
You're also going to be required to use a calculator for most of your high school math
work and quite a good bit of middle school math.
So if you can hold on to that fact that you're not going to have to memorize basic facts
forever in order to be a good math student, better days are coming.
In a perfect world, I would love to see more teachers allow elementary students to either
use a calculator and I'll talk about why that's important in other podcasts or at least use
a time tables list or a 1 to 100s chart to help support the adding and subtracting and
working with decimals that comes up so much in money related questions in particular.
But let's take a minute and dive into the dyscalculia trifacta and talk about what's
going on.
Why is this such a problem for students with dyscalculia?
So the first thing I want you to think about is the base unit and for people listening
who are not math teachers, we count in a base 10 system.
We count with our fingers one through 10 and then we roll over into more than 10.
But when we're telling time, there are 12 hours on a clock.
So that's base 12, you get from one o'clock all the way around to 12 o'clock, midnight
or noon and then you start over again.
That is true unless we're talking about how many minutes are in an hour.
Now we have 60 minutes, so that's a base 60.
You count one second all the way through to 60 seconds and boom, you've rolled into the
next minute.
We also have 60 seconds in a minute, but we have 24 hours in one day, seven days in a
week unless you're looking at a business week, that's five, four weeks in a month, 12 weeks
in a year.
All of these are different bases to count in.
And for any student, that can be a very strange and confusing topic.
Why is it always different?
Here on this same issue will rear its ugly head when you get into the United States Customary
Units of Measurement, which are all over the map.
The metric system, while it seems more confusing when you first learn it, is very direct and
it doesn't change units the way U.S. customary measures do.
We also have this change in units when we're looking at money.
There's one cent in a penny, five cents in every nickel, 10 cents in a dime, 25 cents
in a quarter, 100 cents in a dollar, 75 cents in three quarters.
It's very confusing for students to keep track of these different units and to match them
visually with what a quarter looks like versus what a dime looks like versus coding that
vocabulary, spelling those words and sounding them out and knowing what image and what quantity
they go with.
And that coding piece is a big problem for students with dyscalculia.
If you go to my website, educaulclearning.com, you can see some of the different research
studies this information comes from or feel free to reach out to me directly, hanoraateducaulclearning.com.
And I'm happy to share the research studies where this information comes from because
there's some great research out there for those of us who enjoy reading research studies.
Okay, all of these different base units that we're talking about that flow through time
and money, they all relate to place value.
And that can be part of why place value is tricky for any student, but especially students
with dyscalculia.
They have to tag that place value concept with our base 10 system so that they can write
numbers in ones, tens, hundreds, so that they can look at the ordinarity of numbers, which
digit is in the hundredths place, which digit is in the thousandths place when we get into
decimals versus whole number place value.
And then they also have to utilize this concept of changing units with all of these different
aspects of mathematical topics, time and money, in addition to simply adding, subtracting,
multiplying and dividing.
So we squish so much numeracy into second, third and fourth grade.
It's really a lot for students to try to master.
Well if that's the problem, then what is the solution?
The easiest solution, teachers, I strongly recommend that you try this out.
Let me know if it does not work for you, but I guarantee that it will.
Here's what I want you to do to help solve this problem.
I want you to allow your students to use the right support tools while they're working.
And what this means is that you want to have a place value chart up on the wall, have a
small place value chart students can use at their desk, have a list with pictures of different
types of money and their word form and the quantity that they represent and let students
use that while they're answering money based questions.
If they don't understand the concept, then the resource and reference sheet will never
help them.
If they understand the concept, but they're getting stuck on the base units, then the
reference sheet is going to let them show you what they know about the concept while
reducing confusion over terminology.
I want you to encourage your students to use pictures of clocks labeled with hour and minute
hands and let them reference those, but make sure they reference those while they're doing
their work about time.
See if you can give them a clock where they can manipulate the hands and that will help
with the last time.
Of course, that's a problem if you're working with older students because so many of our
materials are made for beginning learners and older students do not want to use them.
They're embarrassing.
So you might try making some on your own or at least getting the least elementary looking
materials that you can so that your students will use them.
And teachers, I would tell you don't hand a reference sheet to your student and walk
away.
Show them how to use it.
Make them show you that they're using it for a few problems.
And if they're getting classwork and homework answers incorrect, make them use their resources
to correct their work.
That way we're teaching students the precision and accuracy is what counts.
More than memory.
Memory is a great parlor trick.
And for students who have strong memory skills and who do not have dyscalculia, it helps them
increase their speed and it helps them increase their confidence.
For students with this learning disorder, their parietal lobe loses math related information
and there's nothing they can do about it.
So they feel that extra frustration of knowing they've learned a concept and now they just
can't remember what it is.
So let's show our students that it isn't all about memory.
It's about accuracy and precision and double checking your work.
Use reference sheets, use imagery and use tools to help your students get over the hump
of the dyscalculia trifacta.
Don't let time, money and place value get in the way of their math success.
Give them the tools to support themselves in this and all of their future math work.
So the dyscalculia trifacta, time, money and place value.
Very tough for students with this specific learning disorder.
If you have questions or comments or if you need more references, resources or if you'd
like to talk about your students and some of the issues they're facing, please reach
out.
I'm available through Honora at educalclearning.com or check out my website, educalclearning
and reach me through there or through LinkedIn.
And I'm looking forward to having a conversation about this with you in the future.
Thanks for listening.