There are three tiers of support available in general for children who have trouble with math.

There is the base level class instruction; Tier 1. This covers everything that gets done either with the class as a whole or in smaller groups. Most students will be able to succeed in this level of instruction.

The next level is Tier 2 intervention and the domain of special education teachers, tutors and other professionals who help the student. This level of instruction handles catching up with concepts if the student has missed a series of lessons, helping by presenting the material in a more quiet environment, in a smaller group and with easier numbers and sometimes with different formats or using different tools and manipulatives. The objective is to get through classwork and keep up with where the group is at.

When students do not make satisfactory progress in Tier 2, you can intensify the intervention: like more often, longer, or using another method, Tier 3 intervention is started by Dyscalculia Specialists, usually after in depth testing for gaps in the students’ knowledge to work with the student to fill in the gaps and work on conceptual understanding of the material using a variety of tools and techniques. The objective is to train the brain to start finding paths to get the three main centers of the brain involved in math instruction to work together. This type of instruction almost always includes training in subitizing and number sense. It will go back to the level of the student and make sure basic concepts like a number line or the base-ten system is conceptually understood in such a way that further development of the math instruction can take place.