Hello and welcome to What in the World is Dyscalculia, a podcast dedicated to the math
learning disability presented by Educalc Learning and hosted by me, Dr. Honora Wall.
A lot of times in the podcast we talk about where Dyscalculia comes from, how you can
recognize it in your child or in your students, and what you can do about it.
Today I want to tell you what the future looks like.
I want to share the story of one of my students, we'll call her Cameron, and she's having
a very exciting week because she was just inducted into the National Junior Honor Society
at her school.
When I first met Cameron, she was failing math, had just been diagnosed with Dyscalculia,
and I don't think that she or her parents would have envisioned this day happening.
I'm so excited for her because this opens up so many opportunities and really reinforces
the work she's done to get to this point.
So what I want to do today is share with you exactly what we did and how this journey
occurred because you can do it too.
When Cameron was in fifth grade, living in Michigan, going to a public school, she had
always struggled in math and was on the verge of failing and had just been diagnosed with
Dyscalculia.
Her mom is an educator but had never heard of this.
Her class teacher at school had never heard of it and the school had never heard of it.
So the school was very accommodating and said we would love to help and we would love to
support her, we just don't know what to do.
So Cameron's mom found me on a Facebook support page for people who have Dyscalculia and reached
out.
She told me a little bit of Cameron's background and I suggested we start with my standard one
hour a week of tutoring via Zoom.
I like to stick with one hour a week for tutoring unless a child is in crisis.
And by crisis I mean that they're a high schooler about to get an F on a report card because
then you have to repeat credits or if there's a large placement test or something else coming
up or if they have a low F in their class and we're trying to get them to passing.
But in general, one hour a week I find is sufficient.
And I never like to go longer than one hour in a tutoring session because it's bad for
everyone, myself and the student.
At the end of an hour the brain has taken in about all it can on this one topic and
we start to see little mistakes, little slip ups, wrong answers that are so close to being
right just slightly off and that's because the brain is getting a little tired of this
topic and wants to think about something else.
We never want to end a tutoring session or a class if we can help it on that low note.
We have to end on a high note emphasizing success and emphasizing where we have mastery.
It's really an important part of the learning process from a neurology standpoint.
So we started working one hour a week.
At this time the country was still dealing with the pandemic and Cameron was doing remote
schooling.
That comes with its own set of issues as all listeners have gone through this process.
I don't need to tell you how it went.
But it did give us an area that we could use to our benefit because the class work, the
notes, the textbook, all the materials were online and that meant Cameron could share
them during our sessions.
We decided to focus on getting her to a passing mastery level in her class.
This is a standard approach for me.
If people come to me and they want to work on foundational skills or they want to work
over the summer to shore up the foundation or get ready for the next year, then we're
more open minded about doing those skill based practices.
But for the most part, people come to me because they have a problem right now and they need
to fix it so that's where we focus.
We can build in foundational skill work as we're going along.
I never waste time trying to get students to memorize basic facts because I understand
that dyscalculia causes the parietal lobe to lose that information over time.
Instead we go with the support tools that will help the student retrieve basic facts,
either a times tables list, a 1 to 100's chart, a calculator, whatever is most appropriate
for their grade level and their work.
And I say that because if a student is learning how to multiply and divide, then a times tables
list is most appropriate.
If they're learning how to simplify fractions, find equivalent fractions, least common multiple,
greatest common factor, yes, a times tables list, not a multiplication chart for these
students is going to be the most effective tool.
But if a student is learning about perimeter, area, volume, studying formulas, then we need
the calculator because we need to focus on the vocabulary and the new topic.
Getting the math answer right is the secondary piece and I don't want them wasting time or
slowing down their work going through a times tables list.
It's not always the most appropriate.
The calculator is.
Since our class materials were online and we could share them and look at them together,
we could really analyze and pick apart what did a word problem mean, what was she expected
to do, what was she expected to show as far as showing her work.
That really helped her feel like she understood what was happening in the classroom and that
made a really big difference.
I find that that analysis piece as the instructor or educator, you want to present that information,
expose the child so they understand what their expectations are from the material or from
their teacher and then keep going with the unit.
But to never talk about how to think about the problem they're thinking about leaves
metacognition on the table and we really want that to be a piece of our work.
While we're talking about math at the same time.
I also made myself available to the school and to the teacher, shared my website and
my email offered to have any conversations that would make them feel more comfortable
helping Cameron through her challenges of learning how to work with this learning disorder.
So because we focused on skills, on support tools and on understanding what was expected
of her, she was able to start to get success in class.
She knew what she was supposed to do for homework and classwork and she was able to develop
that skill set.
When she did stumble, which of course everyone does, she could bring that to me and we could
analyze what happened nine times out of 10.
It had been a small mistake, something very common to any student, but extremely common
for students with dyscalculia.
She hadn't checked her answers with a calculator.
I find students with learning challenges don't want to have to use their support tools.
So we have to do a lot of training that it's better to support yourself and get the right
answer than to understand the topic and be wrong with your answer because you didn't
verify your work.
Requiring precision and accuracy goes a long way towards developing mathematical thinking
skills.
The next thing that we did was talk about what accommodations the teacher was comfortable
giving her in class and helping mom understand how to explain the need for the accommodations
to the teacher.
And in this case, it went very well.
Not every state, not every teacher is as open to the accommodations and the reasons why
they're important.
But Cameron got lucky, especially when the teacher saw over time that there were changes
in her work, that she was getting more answers right, that she understood more of what was
going on in class, and her demeanor and her engagement level changed because she wasn't
checked out thinking that she could never do it and therefore being quiet.
No, she was starting to really interact in the class more than she had before.
So she did very well that first year she did pass and developed a lot more confidence.
Cameron's family is a military family, so over that summer they moved to Missouri.
And Missouri has been great for Cameron.
She did have the same issues where teachers had never heard of dyscalculia.
The school was not very familiar with the learning disorder or what to do about it.
But Missouri, like Iowa, has adopted the very appropriate and smart measure of allowing
students to use accommodations at all times, including on their state tests.
And I think other states are starting to jump on that bandwagon.
If you live in a state where you can use accommodations on your state mandated test, please let me
know.
I love to know what's happening across the country.
Not all states are as progressive, but I do think we will see more of a change in this
area in the next few years, which only makes sense.
We don't ask students to leave their eyeglasses at home on testing day.
Accommodations work.
They're there for a reason.
And we see that students who have learning disabilities but who have the right accommodations
are passing.
They're getting their appropriate score.
Might be a level 3 out of 5.
Might be a level 4 out of 5.
But it does not inflate their score.
Learning accommodations to students who need them allows them to perform at their appropriate
normal level without the barriers of their learning disability in their way.
So you will not see any inflated grades or inflated performance when you let students
use appropriate accommodations.
So the second year I worked with Cameron.
We had a new teacher.
School was face to face.
We talked a lot about being engaged in the class and how to take notes in the class and
how to make those notes useful during a test or quiz situation.
That's a big piece of working with students who have dyscalculia, helping them learn to
write notes that tell them a story.
They're giving a message to their future selves.
If you work with students who have dyscalculia, I'm sure you have found that they can take
great notes, write down everything you said and every example you put on the board, take
those notes out during a quiz or a test and they have no idea what it means.
It doesn't trigger recall.
It does not give them a better sense of understanding.
And therefore it was a lot of work with very little result.
And this can be challenging.
I am working in the classes I teach right now with high schoolers, working on how we
can change the way we take notes and how we create a study guide right before a test.
So that they're giving personalized messages to themselves through explanations, through
worked examples, through a little asterisk on the side, watch the signs, check your calculator,
whatever is most commonly a problem for that student.
So I encourage educators to work on that piece and really have that conversation with students.
Tell me about these notes.
Does any of it help today?
Does it not help today?
How can we make it help in the future?
And practice different methods of note taking and different methods of writing messages
to themselves.
And that's a big piece of what I did with Cameron.
We would make sure to have a session before she took a test so we could talk about what
she had mastered, how to find those problems on a test and answer all of those first so
she had gotten every right answer she could in the least amount of time.
And now she had more time to focus on the problems that for her were more challenging.
We talked about the mistakes she had made while she was learning that topic.
And wherever she would usually stumble or wherever she would get off track in a procedure
or a step or not feel confident about where to start, that's what we would add to her
note card.
And her teacher was very open to letting her have a note card while she was taking her
classroom quizzes and tests.
Of course, the first few times she and I would make a note card together and she would show
it to her teacher to make sure the teacher understood what we were doing.
This was not trying to take homework and copy all the answers.
It was not a way to help Cameron somehow cheat.
I don't even know how a note card would help a student cheat in general.
But it was a way for her to remind herself what she needed to be aware of and where she
needed to be more careful and how to set up her test taking process.
And this was a second game changer for her.
Once she had learned how to support herself, what tools she needed when and how to use them,
the second piece was really planning what to do during an assessment.
Now for those of us who work with children with dyscalculia, this next piece will not
surprise you.
Children would do a great job on classwork, great job on homework, A's across the board,
have her note card, sit down to take a test, classroom test, she had all of her accommodations,
and she would get C's.
Every once in a while she would get a D, every once in a while she would get a B, but she
mostly fell in that C range.
This happens to students with dyscalculia, first of all, because the parietal lobe is
losing information over time, so we do see a loss in mastery over time.
It also happened because she was very nervous about taking tests, so we started working
on that anxiety piece and having those conversations in our tutoring sessions.
That's an important part of this growth chapter.
Get the success first.
Establish mastery as soon as possible.
Then you've opened up space to talk with the student about anxiety, about their approach
to test taking, about their engagement in class.
Now you're really refining how they act as a student in a math class.
They can take that into any class.
About the same time, Cameron was doing so well that we cut our sessions down to 30 minutes
a week.
She really didn't need much more than that.
We would add in an extra 30 minute session before a big test, and we would take time
off if there wasn't a lot going on in school that week, which happens for so many different
reasons, holidays, test taking time, snow days.
There are a million reasons why you don't need to meet every week, but with her new
confidence and her changed performance, that was an appropriate scaling down for her.
It has taken us some time to work on that test taking piece.
She knows that she tends to freeze when she sits down knowing she's taking a test.
And when we look back on the test and review what happened, then we usually see that maybe
she forgot to verify her answer, or maybe she confused a formula or a step in a procedure.
When she's working with trapezoids, many times she'll forget which two things to add or forget
to divide by two at the end, completely common.
So we've started adding that into her note card, little asterisks next to the triangles
and trapezoids that say divide by two, exclamation point.
That way she remembers that that's the piece she tends to forget.
We also talk a lot about analyzing the test, what kind of question it's asking, and modeling
for herself how she's going to answer that question.
Thinking at first.
Okay, this is the formula.
This is the step I need to get started.
This is what I'm looking for.
It's different from that.
And thinking about what you're thinking, that metacognition piece is huge.
Huge.
You will really see a lot of growth in all of your students if you add that piece in
to your classroom or your tutoring session.
Students at home, I don't know if I want you to add in that piece as a parent without
some extra training.
And honestly, at home I want families to have peaceful, nice time together.
I don't want you constantly having to work with your child or try to fix something that
is wrong in their math performance.
That just sets up a bad emotional space between you and your children.
Coming back to Cameron, the third year that I worked with her, she had a new teacher but
was in the same school, in the same state.
And this time I got to sit in on some of the IEP meetings, have a conversation where I
was just available to answer questions or talk about the accommodations we wanted for Cameron.
And that was a really nice conversation.
I definitely used the time to let the teacher know how much we appreciated her and that
Cameron felt very supported in her class and felt comfortable using her accommodations
and asking for help.
And that really changed her engagement in class as a student.
So in this case they were very good conversations.
And over time this has led to Cameron being a student who understands that she will learn
math and forget it.
A student who understands that she does need a little more time to conceptually talk about
what's happening in the math topic before it really clicks for her.
She knows that forward math, anything using multiplying or adding or having a problem
that you solve from beginning to end is much easier than the backward math.
Division, subtraction, having the perimeter, finding the missing side, anything backwards
like that takes her more time and is more of a challenge.
I find this across the board with all my students who have dyscalculia.
I would even say that's one of the differences between dyscalculia and low numeracy.
Students with low numeracy or weak math foundation, once they've learned a topic they can work
forward and backward much easier than students with dyscalculia.
I have not seen any research on that backward math or the inverse operation piece.
If you know of any please send it my way.
You can find me through the website, educalclearning.com or email me, honoraateducalclearning.com.
That's H-O-N-O-R-A.
I'm always looking for more research to read and I'm always looking for more research to
do.
So at the end of this journey with this particular student, first of all creating mastery right
away.
Second of all learning how to use the right support tools in the right situation.
Third, discussing her anxiety response in test situations.
Fourth using metacognition skills to really reflect on what she needed to do before she
went in to do it, think about what she's thinking about.
Those things really changed her approach to math and her further engagement and seeing
herself as a person who could succeed in math even though she had these learning challenges
made her the kind of student who was inducted into the National Junior Honor Society.
Of course she still has dyscalculia, of course she still needs her accommodations and of
course she will use her support tools throughout her journey as a student.
Nothing about her disability needs to hold her back from accomplishments though and none
of it needs to hold her back from succeeding in class and in school in general.
So that's my success story about my student Cameron.
I hope that this was interesting and helpful to you.
I hope that you can take away some easy things you can put into place in your tutoring sessions
or in your classroom right away and see some real benefits for your students.
If you have ideas for upcoming podcast episodes please email me.
If you're interested in taking any of our teacher training courses make sure you check
out educalclearning.com.
We do have a number of courses that teachers can take online at any time.
Some of them also contain the ability to get CEUs, some are one CEU courses, we have a
two CEU courses.
Those are CEUs given through CSU Pueblo, very excited about that partnership and we will
soon be launching two courses that confer graduate level credit through CSU Pueblo.
So very useful for teachers to keep up with their licensure and have those continuing
credit options while training in dyscalculia.
I'm glad you listened today.
Thank you for listening to What in the World is Dyscalculia.
I'm Dr. Wall.
It's been a pleasure.
I hope to hear from you soon.