Hello and welcome to the What in the World is Dyscalculia podcast sponsored by Educalc
Learning.
I'm your host, Dr. Honora Wall, and today I want to talk about an accommodation that's
pretty standard, whether or not it's really helpful for students with dyscalculia and
how we can make it helpful for students with dyscalculia.
Now there are a lot of accommodations out there and parents have many questions about
what kind of accommodations their students should expect to get.
So let's give a brief overview of interventions as well as accommodations.
Interventions are different strategies we use during instruction and interventions
are designed to help the students get information in a new way.
Accommodations are different things we do during assessments to help support students
as they show us the information they've learned and retained.
So that's our difference between interventions and accommodations.
These will be listed on your students IEP or 504 plan if they have one and they come from
your school counselor or your school administrators with input from teachers and some common best
practices.
So accommodations, let's talk about that.
In later podcasts we'll talk about different interventions and instructional strategies.
But giving students information is one thing.
We can do that to the best of our abilities all day.
If we don't help students show what they've learned then our interventions didn't have
a lot of impact because we're blocking the students getting that information back out.
And that's what accommodations are designed to address.
There are a lot of typical accommodations that you will see on almost every IEP and 504 plan.
The one I want to talk about today is extended time.
Now extended time usually means that students have time and a half.
So if an assessment is expected to take 30 minutes then they might get 45 minutes.
Sometimes they can get double time so a 30 minute assessment they would have an hour to
complete it.
And sometimes they'll have extended time meaning they can take an assessment over number of
days so they're not taking all of it at one time.
Extended time has been shown by research studies to be very beneficial to students with dyslexia.
Now having dyslexia is a specific learning disorder that impacts reading and comprehension
from text.
So giving students extended time gives them more time to think about what they're reading,
comprehend and process the information and then answer questions about it.
Extended time is given to almost everyone.
We don't have studies yet that focus on extended time as a benefit for students specifically
with dyscalculia, dysgraphia.
I haven't found any that focus on ADHD but if you know of some please email them to me
at hanora at educaalclearning.com or go to my website educaalclearning.com and send them
to me there.
I'm always looking for more research on this topic.
So why does extended time work?
When does extended time not work?
A lot of it comes down to training going back to that intervention piece.
Do the students know what to do with their extended time?
How do they make the most of having extra time?
I want to give you one of my favorite tips for using extended time that works for students
with any kind of struggles.
But when it doesn't work it's because students aren't sure what to do.
They look at the test.
A lot of times students with dyscalculia or with a history of struggling in math say well
I sure don't know anything here and they tend to give up or they rush through the test to
get it over with and behind them.
And then they're done early.
This is frustrating for teachers and parents because we've given the student an accommodation.
We gave them the room to do their best and they didn't take advantage of it is how it
seems to us.
But let's change the way we tell students to use that extended time.
I think you'll see a lot of benefits.
What I like to have my students do as the first method of using their extended time I
tell them to stop themselves.
Every usually five questions.
So answer questions one through five then again at 10 then again at 15 and so on.
It's an easy number to remember.
For students who have very mild dyscalculia or who are good test takers they might use
this method every 10 questions.
And for students with extreme anxiety either test anxiety social anxiety or generalized
anxiety disorder I might tell them to try this method every three questions until we've
gotten some mastery and then they can move to every five questions.
So here's the method at question five pencil down feet flat on the floor sit up straight
fix that posture deep breath in hold long exhale do it again deep breath in hold long
exhale look somewhere else in the room.
Get your eyes off that computer away from that piece of paper look at the floor look
at the ceiling very similar to when we're driving when you're driving you don't want
to keep your eyes only looking forward on the road you need to check all of your mirrors
your rear view both your sides and then get back to the road in front of you.
If you only stare straight ahead down the road first of all you're not aware of any
dangers around you and second of all it's very easy to lose focus and that's very dangerous.
The same kind of thing happens when we're taking assessments.
So we want to break our focus from just that test and look somewhere else.
We take a few deep breaths we fixed our posture move those shoulders around look somewhere
else now get back to question six do the exact same thing question 10 pencil down feet flat
on the floor posture straight up that spine is reaching for the ceiling shoulders down
and back deep breath in hold deep breath out it resets our blood pressure it resets our
panic mode it resets our focus and the thoughts in our head stop behaving like a bird that's
flown into a room.
I've seen students use only this method and increase their test scores.
It's amazing to see give it a try.
Let me know how it works for your students but I would guarantee you're going to see
improvement from just this regulating our emotions and regulating our reaction to the
situation we're in gives us a sense of control and that's very important in maintaining that
self efficacy that idea that I can do this I can figure out the situation and I can master
it and that is tied to academic performance.
If you reach out I'll let you know some of the research about that or you can go to Google
scholar and look into it yourself it's really fascinating how much control we have over a
situation regardless of the content on the test we're taking.
So once they've got that control they kind of reset themselves that makes it easier to
focus on the question and pay attention to the tiny details.
Is this question asking me about perimeter where I need to add is it area where I need
to multiply did they give me a total and I'm working backwards is there a second step did
I get my first answer and mark that but I missed the next thing I was supposed to do and that's
where a lot of our mistakes come in with math assessments.
So that's another way that we're increasing those right answers because our students have
better focus to pay attention to the details they pop out.
It also helps students get through an entire assessment especially the longer ones without
just Christmas tree or guessing everything is see and handing it in without thought.
And that's a real issue for students who have anxiety if you don't have anxiety and this
does not sound familiar to you count your blessings.
That's your gratitude for today because having an anxiety reaction is very overwhelming.
It truly can feel and mimic a heart attack.
It truly can feel like you're drowning.
It truly creates a situation for the person where they must escape the event that's causing
this anxiety response.
We don't want students escaping during their math test.
We want them to give it their best shot and we want them to have as much focus and as
much willingness to try at the last question as they do at the very first question.
Completing emotion every time you take a test and with that regularity you don't refocus
at question five and then keep going to question 30.
You do it again at question 10.
You do it again at question 15.
If you're a teacher tutor or interventionist I want you to practice this with your students.
Make them put down that pencil make them stop and fix their posture.
Don't let them continue until they have reset themselves.
We have a tendency all of us no matter if we have dyscalculia or anything else or nothing
important or exciting at all.
We have a tendency to want to finish and if we're competitive or if we're growing up
in a competitive U.S. society we want to finish fast because that is rewarded.
We want to break that cycle.
The reward from a math assessment is not being done first.
The reward from a math assessment is getting the most answers right that you possibly can
showing the best of your knowledge.
Those are two different goals and it's our job to help students set the right goal and
give them the tools to meet it.
You might be wondering what in the world deep breathing and sitting up straight has to do
with a math learning disability.
Really it does not have anything to do with the math learning disability.
It has to do with regulation with self control.
And this is why using this trick helps students no matter what kind of learning challenge they're
facing.
It's not tied to any disorder.
It's tied to ourselves.
Every student can control their emotional response if we give them the right training and give
them this tool.
I have seen students increase their test scores doing nothing but this.
And it's a great way to use extended time and make extended time a beneficial tool for
students of all ages, grades and ability levels.
So I strongly encourage you to give it a shot.
Now this isn't usually what we tell students to do with extended time.
We tell them to check their work.
Well let me tell you that any student who's done the math problem once does not want to
do it twice.
If they have any kind of struggles with math they absolutely are not going to do more math
than they absolutely have to.
And if they have dyscalculia they really don't know if they did it right or wrong the first
time anyway in many cases.
So doing it again certainly isn't going to feel any different for these students.
We can change that with some of the instructional strategies and long term practices that we'll
talk about in other podcasts.
But this is our typical student response.
So when we tell them to use their extended time to check their work they're thinking
you've got to be kidding.
I didn't want to take the test the first time and now you want me to take it twice.
So we get a lot of resistance.
If you can start with this emotional self-regulation piece let students have some success, have
a feeling of mastery and self-control.
They can finish a math test feeling better about the situation and not feeling like they
got run over by the math truck.
Then you're going to have space where they're receptive to you showing them how to double
check their work.
Don't have them do the entire test and double check every answer but show them the key things
to look for.
Reading questions again.
Did I get the right piece?
Did I multiply here?
Does it look like I guessed on these four?
Let me pick one of these and see if I can take another look at it.
You're going to have students who are more open to that idea when they feel calm and
peaceful and when they feel like they were in control of their test.
So the way you get to double checking work is by going through emotional self-regulation.
And it's very simple.
You can do this with any program, any curriculum, any setting.
All we want to do is have students stop at question 5, question 10, question 15, again
at question 20, again at question 25, and again at question 30 as often as they need
to.
They're not going to spend forever daydreaming.
That's not the point of this exercise.
It's putting them back in control of themselves.
Take down, pencil down, out of their hands, stretch those fingers.
Get the spine up.
Get the shoulders back down.
Take those deep breaths.
When oxygen moves through our body, it also moves through our brain and it brings blood
along with it.
It stimulates our thinking and it helps us maintain focus.
I'm really excited about this tool because it's easy, because it's fast and effective,
because anyone can do it in any setting, and because I know that it works.
I've seen this for years and I have great success with it.
And it does open the door to the other accommodations and interventions that are going to address
content.
So we will talk about content-based accommodations in other podcasts as well.
If you are using a certain accommodation and you're not seeing a lot of benefit, please
reach out to me and I'll be happy to talk about it in a podcast or an article and get
you some information to make it useful.
If you have questions about accommodations, especially for students with dyscalculia, because
dyscalculia affects a different part of the brain than dyslexia, then dysgraphia, then
ADHD.
It's different than generalized anxiety disorder and it's different from trauma.
All of these issues still impact learning and all of these issues still impact performance.
However, not every accommodation addresses the specific need.
So talking about accommodations and really analyzing what kind of benefit your student
is getting from an accommodation will help you choose the right one.
If you're the person who writes IEPs and writes accommodations and interventions, I like to
say that in this case, more is more.
It's not less is more.
Give students every chance to be successful.
Don't be stingy with your accommodations.
You'd know which accommodations are best suited for which students and which situations.
Again, if you have any other comments, questions or concerns about accommodations, please reach
out, email me, Honora at educalclearning.com or visit the website educalclearning.com
and send me your specific questions.
I'll also be putting information on my Thinkific site.
I have a course called All About Dyscalculia, which is free and I put up information as often
as I can.
If you need a direct link to that, go to the website or let me know.
I hope this conversation was helpful.
I know that accommodations are a real key to success for students with dyscalculia and
using the self-regulation emotional approach that I talked about today will bring your
students closer to success.
Thanks for listening.