I’ve volunteered to go over math with my cousin’s daughter. She’s smart and all, but… Well, I suppose I’d do well to summarize the situation.
The Baltimore County school system isn’t the best. I’ll just say that right now. At this particular school, there don’t seem to be any teachers who have had experience with this type of learning issue. The Board of Education (according to my cousin) is just being a bunch of jerks and refuse to interfere in any way. So here’s this thirteen or fourteen year old girl stuck in middle school who can’t do the most basic math and is getting little to no help from the school system. And yes, she is in a special education class. She’s had tutors, but they don’t seem to help and are typically too expensive for my cousin to handle in the long term. And she truly can’t grasp the ideas — the teacher talks too fast, switches around organization systems every five seconds*, and… Well, you get the picture.
Thing is, once it’s explained well, Mandy (the daughter) understands it. My grandmother had her doing addition and subtraction quite well for a little while. But she has a lot of trouble remembering it. She’ll understand something one day, but goes back the next and can’t do anything she could do before.
The way I intend to approach this is to start out with some type of memory game to help her keep things in her mind for days, weeks, forever. I’m also in the process of creating simple reference pages for when she forgets something. I’m going to teach her how to pull out important ideas from the teacher’s rantings and take her own notes for her own reference. I didn’t learn to take notes until my freshman year of high school, and that little lesson helped me a great deal. If I get her taking notes a bit earlier, then perhaps I can get some study habits in… It’ll definitely take her a lot longer to learn these things than it will her peers, but the only ideas I have involve teaching it over and over again until it sticks. The best ideas I have involve developing her memory — putting an emphasis on that development.
Too bad that teacher of hers won’t help her with the basics. =(
I’ve always been an AP student, though. I’m taking Calculus BC at the moment, so all this stuff seems rather simple to me. But this means that I’ve never really dealt with a learning problem like this. I’ve never been in a class with someone who has this type of learning disorder. I don’t know what kind of memory games or methods I could use to help her. Her class is getting to the point where my cousin and grandmother can’t help with the math anymore (my grandmother because she’s aging and my cousin because she’s never taken math seriously). My aunt (Mandi’s grandmother) can’t do a whole lot for her either — she works harder at her job than anyone I’ve ever known. She has no extra time to teach her granddaughter. I volunteered because I thought I could try something… (I volunteered about an hour ago, actually. ^^;) I’m still going through the public school system, so I’m better caught up on what teaching methods are being used. I’m still in math classes, so my math hasn’t gotten rusty. And I work for free, which I’m sure my cousin appreciates with her rather low income. I think that if anyone can help, it’s me. But being a teenager, I don’t have the experience to confidently begin with this.
I’d appreciate feedback on my ideas and any additional suggestions.
I really want to help her. She’s a good kid; she doesn’t deserve to be left in a cloud of confusion.
* There was this whole thing about coloured folders. The teacher made it clear what assignment went in what colour folder. That’d be fine and dandy if she didn’t keep switching around the colours. Mandy can keep it straight with one set, but keeps getting confused and puts things in the wrong folder accidentally when there’s a change; she gets marked down for this.
Re: Memory issues.
Here’s what I do tutoring similar kids (for money unfortnately — I have to keep a roof over my head too.)
First get a book or two books with oodles and oodles of practice of the same skill in ten different positions. I use two things:
(1) old (pre-1955) texts which I pick up at used book stores and amazon.com zshops. I particularly like Arithmetic We Need, the series I learned out of myself — it actually *teaches* multiple strategies to solve problems (what a radical modern concept — oops, 1955) Another series you can often get is Making Sure of Arithmetic (old versions). Do NOT use 1970’s or later 1960’s books, which add to the kind of confusion you are trying to get away from. Use these as texts and *don’t* write in them — they are valuable resources and hard to replace.
(2) Complete MathSmart workbooks. These are available at bookstores or can be ordered from amazon.com.
I would start your student right back at Grade 2, maybe even review parts of Grade 1 in the MathSmart, and at the beginning of Grade 3 where there is lots of review of addition in the old books.
I sit down with the student and have them read the instructions and follow *all* the suggested practices and exercises on the page — particularly including the exercises of counting concrete objects, which is fundamental to developing number sense and is probably what she missed.
Very rarely I may skip a topic which is obviously enrichment, such as Roman numerals, but otherwise I drag the student spep by step through *all* the practices in two books. Again, it is exactly this consistency and repetition and step-by-step development that she missed. I sit beside the student and ask her to figure out each question on her own; I give hints if she is not sure how, but as much as possible she gets it independently. I give immediate feedback on both right and wrong answers. I insist on writing in pen — it isn’t an erasing class, it’s a math class, and that is an important distinction to be learned. If an answer is wrong, she crosses it out immediately and corrects it; this is called learning from your mistakes and is vital; you don’t erase missteps and try to pretend they were not there (if this worked so great, you wouldn’t be here, right?)
Use *simple* concrete models, all the time. An abacus is good if you can get a nice *plain* one (ten rows of ten wooden beads, period); very good for base 10. A baggie full of pennies is a big help. I sometimes use file cards cut into single one-centimeter squares, strips of ten-centimeter by one centimeter marked into the ten squares, and sheets of ten centimeters by ten centimeters marked into the 100 squares. You cna make these yourself by drawing in marker on large file cards and cutting out; store them in a large baggie; they are extremely useful for clarifying the base 20 system, which I guarantee you your student has not got.
I do recite tables — out loud and the *complete* question *and* answer — with the students now and then as needed and as suggested by the program we are following, but in general much of the learning comes from day by day use.
We start with a level that is fairly easy for the student, Grade 2 or even 1 in Complete MathSmart and review of Grade 3 in the old books in your case. We then work up quite quickly, often several pages per day. As we work up to higher levels we slow down.
When you do this, prepare for the first few months to go slowly. It takes a while for a student to get used to a new system and approach. It also takes a while to get used to success and to develop confidence.
After a few months, usually a light flashes in the brain and things begin to pick up.
Just two days ago, a girl I worked with for six months in Grade 3 and restarted with four months ago in Grade 4 had one of those flashes of illumination; she started to understand the fast way to divide 9 into 3600 for example. This is a kid who four months ago didn’t know her times tables past 2 x 3, and two years ago I was teaching to add 4 + 9 with a baggie full of pennies.
I work with students two sessions of an hour each weekly. This is enough to make a real change, but slowly. If you can do three or four sessions a week, you can get rpogress a bit faster — but remember, make haste slowly, ie develop a strong foundation first and the time will be repaid many times over later.
Good luck and feel free to ask specific questions.
Re: Memory issues.
One more thing: every day, go back and review stuff from before. Never ever ever just keep moving forward.
If it isn’t easy and fun, then … it’s not in there yet, spend some more time on it every day until it is.
No book has enough practice! Just be sure if you pull practice from something like online worksheets (and you can find a lot of them if you Google “math worksheets) that they *fit* what you are doing and don’t throw in something new.
Aaargh!! It’s good that you see how important it is to be consistent… that what would be a fine “little switch” for some students (like yourself) just throws other students who ***could*** be making good progress.
You’ve got the basic idea: start where she *is* and keep reviewing it. Landmark School has a solid math curriculum for their school that has lots of good tips & techniques (http://www.landmarkoutreach.org/pub.htm - scroll down to the very bottom).
I guess the other thing I had to learn (being in a similar situation) was that it was really, really okay to do the same thing many, many times. I felt guilty not thinking of new and exciting lesson plans with one group - until I talked to other teachers and realized that no, the structure and predictable routine was what they thrived on. Teaching those ADDers is more intuitively obvious to me … but this was less prep time for sure :-)