dyscalculia
Dyscalculia can be understood as learning differences in Math. Similar to other learning differences, dyscalculia does not define a single type of difference and people with dyscalculia will present their own unique challenges. Dyscalculia impacts people differently at different stages in development and throughout their educational and life experiences. A commonality amongst individuals with dyscalculia is an underlying difficulty with the visual-spatial concepts and language processing concepts of Math.
Strengths:
*verbal skills
*creativity
*artistic
*intuitive thinking
*practical
*seeing the big picture (thinking in wholes)
Challenges:
*recognition of numbers and symbols
*number sense
*visualizing quantity or a number line
*procedures and principles of counting
*estimating and mental math
*measurement (time, money, temperature, length, area, etc.)
*patterns
*working with numbers (+, -, x, /, etc.)
*spatial relations (reading a map, knowing left from right, following a route, identifying a 3D perspective from a 2D image, etc.)
*rules (formulas, scoring games, sorting strategies)
*memory (of math concepts)
*attention (difficult to focus when material being covered is not being understood)
Please follow THIS link to read a short article written by a CEO who was diagnosed with dyscalculia.
Tips for in the Classroom
Use concrete examples to teach new skills.
Have students use manipulatives as much as possible.
Encourage students to ask questions as they work.
Encourage students to find different methods to solve math problems.
Students need to work in a place that has few, if any distractions.
Use different colors for numbers in specific place values (ones in blue, tens in yellow, decimal in red, etc.)
Use visuals.
Break bigger problems into smaller components.
Have students talk their way through a problem and talk about what they are doing.
Provide visual and/or audio cues like advance organizers on the board, sticky note lists with personalized instructions on their desk.
Partner a student with dyscalculia with someone else in the class who can help them so that they don't have to wait for you all the time. This should alleviate the "What do I do now?" problem and disruptions due to waiting. This is also where instructions written down on a sticky note would come in handy.
Strengths:
*verbal skills
*creativity
*artistic
*intuitive thinking
*practical
*seeing the big picture (thinking in wholes)
Challenges:
*recognition of numbers and symbols
*number sense
*visualizing quantity or a number line
*procedures and principles of counting
*estimating and mental math
*measurement (time, money, temperature, length, area, etc.)
*patterns
*working with numbers (+, -, x, /, etc.)
*spatial relations (reading a map, knowing left from right, following a route, identifying a 3D perspective from a 2D image, etc.)
*rules (formulas, scoring games, sorting strategies)
*memory (of math concepts)
*attention (difficult to focus when material being covered is not being understood)
Please follow THIS link to read a short article written by a CEO who was diagnosed with dyscalculia.
Tips for in the Classroom
Use concrete examples to teach new skills.
Have students use manipulatives as much as possible.
Encourage students to ask questions as they work.
Encourage students to find different methods to solve math problems.
Students need to work in a place that has few, if any distractions.
Use different colors for numbers in specific place values (ones in blue, tens in yellow, decimal in red, etc.)
Use visuals.
Break bigger problems into smaller components.
Have students talk their way through a problem and talk about what they are doing.
Provide visual and/or audio cues like advance organizers on the board, sticky note lists with personalized instructions on their desk.
Partner a student with dyscalculia with someone else in the class who can help them so that they don't have to wait for you all the time. This should alleviate the "What do I do now?" problem and disruptions due to waiting. This is also where instructions written down on a sticky note would come in handy.