Category Archives: Dyscalculia Overview

It is not about the tool but….

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We always say; ” It is not about the tool, it is about the talk that accompanies the tool”, but some tools are just better than others.

See in our link for today the Tiny Polka Dot from @MathforLove that has no less than 16 math games and will be with your students for years.

Read all about it: HERE

Get real with fractions

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We tend to say: ” They need to get it into their hands before they can get it into their heads”. It refers to lots of math operations but the mathcoachcorner has an interesting take in how to show fractions early and have them play it out.

Read all about it: HERE

Precursor Math Concepts

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The Early Math Collaborative has a great page explaining the notion of Precursor Math Concepts.

Just as the foundation of a building anchors it in the earth and provides essential support for the growing structure, in the first three years of life children engage in a very fundamental way with concepts that anchor a child’s mathematical thinking and are essential for the growth of further mathematics.

Read all about it: HERE or read the new book Precursor Math Concepts

Teaching time tables with rekenrek

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There is a pilot study going on to see how we can teach children time tables by using the Dutch invented rekenrek. See all the details in the link for today.

Read all about it: HERE

Using the ten frames

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Donna Boucher from the Math Coach Corner shares a wonderful article about a game the children can play to boost their familiarity with the all important combinations with ten:

Ten is obviously an important benchmark in our number system. In Kindergarten, learning the combinations of the numbers up to ten is a year-long process. Ten-frames are an ideal tool for exploring combinations for ten. Because of its relationship to ten, one hundred is also an important benchmark. Students can practice composing 100 with a kit of small printed ten-frames.

Read all about it: HERE

Build-A-Train

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Great research done by H Moriah Sokolowski 1 2, Rebecca Merkley 3, Sarah Samantha Bray Kingissepp 2, Praja Vaikuntharajan 2, Daniel Ansari 2

The ‘Build-A-Train’ task was developed and used to examine whether children spontaneously use a number or physical size approach on an un-cued matching task. In the Build-A-Train task, an experimenter assembles a train using one to five blocks of a particular length and asks the child to build the same train. The child’s blocks differ in length from the experimenter’s blocks, causing the child to build a train that matches based on either the number of blocks or length of the train, as it is not possible to match on both. 

The Build-A-Train task and findings from this current study set a foundation for future longitudinal research to investigate the causal relationship between children’s acquisition of symbolic mathematical concepts and attention to number.

Read all about it: HERE

Why wait

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We have said it often; early detection is key to great remediation. So in our link for today the writers make the case to start testing in Kindergarten. This goes very well with the initiative we launched with the DyscalculiaScreener.org site

Read all about it: HERE

Music and dyscalculia

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The number dyslexia blog writes a nice article about how music can help with managing Dyscalculia.

Read all about it: HERE

Keep them calm

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Surely in this age of uncertainty it is important to keep the children in your classes calm. The UK chat has a wonderful article about it with a move by move manual to make it happen.

Read all about it: HERE

Life can be difficult for our kids

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Children’s mental health and well-being are tied to their achievement in school. For elementary and middle school students, the classroom can be an overwhelming environment that may cause social pressure and performance anxiety.

As a result, mental health interventions are often needed to help address adverse effects, particularly for students of color who face the additional threat of negative stereotypes and biases about their ability to succeed academically, some experts say.

See the article in the link for today to find five ways to help your kids.

Read all about it: HERE

Kitchen math

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A wonderful way to teach your children some number sense and show them that math is not just in the school but everywhere around you, is to have them help you in the kitchen. NPR has a nice article that tells you how to go about it.

Read all about it: HERE

Visual aids are so important

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Seen on Twitter from someone who saw it on Facebook, but here is the story. Our students often have difficulty grouping like terms or substituting. As soon as we change the symbolic language for pictures of something they are familiar with, their focus changes and they have less difficulty working the problems. Hence the cycle Concrete representational abstract. So if they have problems with the abstract notation, move back to the representational.

Improving spatial skills will improve math skills

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It has now been confirmed, although there was an understanding about it a lot longer. Age and gender do not make a difference, the improvement of spatial skills will improve the math skills of all, so time for action.

Read all about it: HERE

Realigning Learning

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Teachlearning.com urges us to realign learning as we would do with our cars.

Read all about it: HERE

Finding the subitizing in groupitizing

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‘Groupitizing’ refers to the observation that visually grouped arrays can be accurately enumerated much faster than can unstructured arrays. Previous research suggests that visual grouping allows participants to draw on arithmetic abilities and possibly use mental calculations to enumerate grouped arrays quickly and accurately. Here, we address how subitizing might be involved in finding the operands for mental calculations in grouped dot arrays. We investigated whether participants can use multiple subitizing processes to enumerate both the number of dots and the number of groups in a grouped array. We found that these multiple subitizing processes can take place within 150 ms and that dots and groups seem to be subitized in parallel and with equal priority. Implications for research on mechanisms of groupitizing are discussed.

Read all about it: HERE

Estimation a key skill

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Building children’s estimation skills supports their number sense and helps them judge whether a number is reasonable or not.

Estimation is the process of evaluating a quantity when the situation calls for a rough or tentative number. An estimate is not merely a “guess.” A reasonable estimate depends upon mathematical understandings of both numerosity and measurement.

Read all about it: HERE

Math is everywhere

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Math is everywhere around us, so it is important to show that to your youngsters. Here the Early Math Collaborative shows us ways to even have fun with some math when doing the laundry.

Read all about it: HERE

Help them when it gets difficult

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Some great tips on how to keep your pre-schooler motivated when the problems they get are more challenging.

Along with EDC’s Young Mathematicians team of Paul Goldenberg and Kristen Reed, Young has been studying mastery motivation and its relation to early mathematics development in preschool classrooms. Here, Young and Goldenberg present five things that all parents and teachers can do to foster this essential skill.”

Read all about it: HERE

The Y comes before how

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Great article emphasizing how important it is that teachers spend some time about why of a process or operation before moving on to the how. It is the debate about the chicken and the egg. It is easier to explain the why so the students can better work the how or is getting fluent in the operation a help in understanding the why of it all.

It is one of Dr. Schreuder’s golden rules to not drill something that is not yet conceptually understood.

Read all about it: HERE

Executive function and Dyscalculia

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At the Ghent university in Belgium, they are planning a rather interesting project. They will review the relationship of executive function and dyscalculia. Here is what they say about it:

Project description

Dyslexia and dyscalculia are learning disorders with a high prevelance. They correlate strongly. A possible explanation can be found in the hypothesis of deficits in executive functioning. Therefore, this research maps out the profiles of executive functions. This is done by use of a comparative study existing of four groups: dyslexia, dyscalculia, a comorbid and a control group.

Read all about it: HERE

They still exist

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They still exist the Dyscalculia deniers and we also get reports from Parents that some teachers, even after having been given the psycho educational report outlining the learning disability, are still stuck in the equality phase and cannot see that if you put a child who needs crutches in a varsity team, you’ll need to make some adjustments. Teachers if nothing else please visit https://DyscalculiaAwareness.org

The case against the worksheets and what comes next

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Robert Kaplinsky shares his views on why we would need to stop using worksheets and what we should consider instead:

Read all about it: HERE

Math magic

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When we make early math concepts simple and fun, kids feel empowered to continue to learn — and that truly is magical! Here are some easy-to-learn illusions that will infuse math with the enchantment of magic.

Read all about it: HERE

There is more to counting that you may think

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Behind the counting that children do there is a whole science with various stages and principles.

Understanding the 5 counting principles is key to understanding numerosity, which is the ability to perceive the number of items in a group. Sometimes, numerosity happens consciously, such as with counting. But other times, numerosity happens unconsciously, such as with subitising.

Read all about it: HERE

How to do number talks

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The oceans of first grade fun website gives us a detailed explanation on how they go about number talks. They include some resources, the timing and examples. All you need to get up to speed with number talks.

Read all about it: HERE

You will need your focus and memory

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Who would have thought that the food you eat will impact your focus and memory? My mom would always tell me to drink milk before a test as it would help my memory but here is a nutritionist from Harvard University with some foods to avoid so you’ll maintain your focus and memory.

Read all about it: HERE

Who needs math intervention?

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A great article by Donna Boucher where she lists a number of categories of students who all at some time receive intervention for math, the question however is how effective that is and if there are better or different solutions that may be tried.

Read all about it: HERE

Advent Calendar Fun

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We are happy to present the Dyscalculia Advent Calendar with every day something related to Math or Dyscalculia, or just something about Christmas.

The importance of math in the early years.

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In the last decade, educators have focused on boosting literacy skills among low-income kids in the hope that all children will read well by third grade. But the early-grade math skills of these same low-income children have not received equal attention. Researchers say many high-poverty kindergarten classrooms don’t teach enough math and the few lessons on the subject are often too basic. While instruction may challenge kids with no previous exposure to math, it is often not engaging enough for the growing number of kindergarteners with some math skills.

Read all about it: HERE