I am a mother of a 7 year old first grader with severe LD, ADHD and developmental delays. Matthew attends school, but there is no specialized cirriculum for LD students at his school. I have been working with him at home on reading, and finally found and purchased a program that is working for us in reading. Now I’d like to find a suitable program for arthrimatic for first grade.
Can any of you wise teachers recommend a program for math? Ideally it would have graduated workbooks (helps Mom stay organized!), lots of “hands on” and provide for lots of practice, as well as teach me how to teach abstract concepts like place value, and be affordable. I need ways of making the abstract concrete for Matthew. Matthew can count to 25, and do addition and subtraction to 10 using manipulatives and is learning to tell time, but an organized cirriculum would be a big help.
Thanks in advance, Jody
OH, and...
… you probably already figured this out, but I wouldn’t try to keep the kid at the pace of the regular curriculum. You’ll end up with huge gaps and frustrations. I teach older students — the ones who got shoved on through too fast, year after year, who end up in *college* not realizing that 74 isn’t 7 and 4. Yes, they get it at taht age… and are pretty annoyed that nobody explained it when it would have made a difference.
One other thought...
The Landmark School- a school for LD students in Massachusetts which has been around forever I think- has an outreach component where they make some of their curriculum materials available. They have a math program which ios pretty inexpensive that I really like- called the Landmark Arithmetic Program. Their web address is www.landmarkschool.org
Robin
Re: Best Program for Home?
I think I would try Singapore Math first. It’s inexpensive, so you can buy just a half-year’s worth to try.
The website has placement exams, scope and sequence, etc. so you can decide whether to start with Early Bird or with level 1. (They have introduced a new series, but I recommend sticking with the tried-and-true Primary Math series.) If you start with level 1, you might want to also buy the “Know Your Maths” supplement, which provides extra practice problems that are broken down a little bit more, and this book is arranged in the same sequence as the coursebook and workbooks. A half-year of level 1 (one coursebook and two workbooks) would cost under $25 with shipping and handling. Website is http://www.singaporemath.com
Singapore is easy to supplement with inexpensive manipulatives. For example, you can buy plastic poker chips and label them, to duplicate the pictured chips in the coursebook. You can cut colored index cards, or construction paper, to make the little “flip books” pictured in the coursebook that work on teaching place value.
The general developmental progression for math is concrete to visual to abstract. Singapore presents the visual format. You can supplement with manipulatives to make the visual concrete. Singapore is incremental, so the visual does eventually make it into the abstract.
Around level 2 or so, you would probably need to supplement Singapore for math facts. If Singapore isn’t enough for your son to learn the facts, then Math Facts the Fun Way (http://www.citycreek.com) usually works very well. Once the math facts are learned, many kids need to work on developing speed and automaticity. For that, Quarter Mile Math software (http://www.thequartermile.com) has worked very well for us.
If Singapore does not work for you, I would look at Math-U-See, which is very manipulative-based. MUS is really great at developing concepts, but isn’t as good at developing computation skills and word problems as Singapore. Also, MUS is much more expensive up-front because you need their manipulatives, which are quite expensive.
Mary
Unfortunately, the math folks are *way* behind the reading folks in this department!! It’s hard to *find* the math folks — the emphasis is so heavily on reading. (I keep toying with making the program myself…)
Saxon Math is often recommended for LD kids — it is heavy on calculation though and light on concept development. Personally I think it would be excruciating for a concept-driven kiddo. Likewise Kumon.
Math-U-See is defnitely worth investigating, though you would probably want to supplement to make sure your son is making the connection between the ideas presented visually and the symbols he’s supposed to manipulate. I”ve heard the best reviews of M-U-S
from parents of bright but very dyslexic students.
I hear lots of homeschoolers who really like Singapore Math and what they say appeals to me — a good integration of concepts and calculation, and lots of understanding built in — but I do not know how that would apply to a kiddo with trouble with abstractions.
Peggy Kaye has written some *excellent* books full of Math games and ideas — they are a little heavy on the language side for a kiddo with dyslexia, likewise Marilyn Burns’ and her books. HOwever, I think I would start there and then spend more time with more examples of concrete stuff and not worry if they couldn’t understand math stories in their heads. ONe of the things I like best about Kaye’s books is you get a feel for how important development and maturityh are for understanding mathematical ideas. If a kid’s mind hasn’t gotten to the stage where they’re able to comprehend certain abstractions, you’re simply wasting your time to throw stuff two stages ahead at them. On the other hand, you can watch them grow if you give them just a taste of what’s just ahead.
Chinn & Ashcroft over in the UK have written a whole teaching handbook — Dyslexia and Mathematics: A Teaching Handbook — that I often refer to, and there’s yet another book called Dyslexia and Mathematics from the UK that is also excellent for understanding how a concrete thinker’s mind works — how they can struggle so with stuff that comes automatically for others… but they’re not stupid…
And if you get a chance to drop in on Joyce Steeves’ sessions at IDA conferences, do so. She *does* teach the program you describe — she just hasn’t got it produced for the masses.