Dyslexia and
 math/s

  Dyslexia Parents Resource

I truly believe that children need to learn the BASICS of math at an early ago. Like counting apples and oranges. Counting is the basic fundamental of math. If you have difficulty counting and recognizing numbers then intervention must occur to secure the thought process

Many dyslexic children have trouble with sequencing. Learning to count from one to twenty was a challenge. For a while I would never hear the numbers 13, 14 & 15, while my son counted. So I started back at the very beginning. Counting 1 through 5. We did this with everything, we counted Cheerio's, we counted cars, we counted crayons; but the one my son enjoyed the most was placing spaghetti in the pan: we would count five noodles from the box, then place the noodles in the pan, counting 1 noodle, 2 noodle, 3 noodle, 4 noodle, 5 noodles, and repeat this until the box was empty. Once this was accomplished and my son was able to count from one to twenty without failure, we moved on to more difficult problems.

• Counting backwards, what a challenge, talk about frustration! He would get so mad at me. “You make me do this stupid stuff, you don’t make the others do this.” After a while, he was able to count from one to 100 forwards and backwards. I taught him by counting out cereal, I would count out 20 pieces of cereal (to start) and place them on the table, and he had to count backwards as he ate the cereal one piece at a time. Boy - oh boy - did he love his cereal!

As time went on and addition and subtraction entered into the realm, he seemed very at ease. “This isn’t so bad” he would tell me. I was so thrilled for him. I was very cautious, however.

• An eight year old boy coming for remediation was given 100 Lego blocks and ten of his favorite dinky cars. He was then instructed to lay them out in 10 rows with ten blocks in each row and at the end of every tenth block he placed a dinky car. This exercise gave him a good sense of tens.

Once he mastered counting 1- 100 forward he used the same technique to count backwards. It took him five lessons to do both but at the end of the exercise he was confident about his learning.

Another game to reinforce sequencing of numbers can be played by the parent saying a number (e.g. 27) and asking the child to say the next number (28) or the one before (26).(S.A., Karachi, Pakistan).

His math class was starting to learn how to read a clock, and not a digital one. He needed to learn the minutes and seconds as well as the hours. Well, this opened up a totally different can of worms. I spent many hours with him, explaining the difference between the second hand, minute hand and hour hand. Here is an example of what I did:

Example: Let's draw a BASEBALL, as big as you can get it, on this piece of cardboard. Then I want you to draw a face on the ball. Instead of putting stitching around the ball like a regular baseball, I asked him to make 60 slashes on the inside of the circle, he looked at me like I was a nut case, but he did it anyway. He could do this with whatever colors he wanted.

After he completed this project - it took a few hours -I laid him on the floor and traced his arms, he was to cut the arms out and color them in different colors, one being the minute hand and the other the hour hand. The second hand I just cut a narrow piece of construction paper and attached it to the arms. Then we would go to the TV and see what time the ball game came on. I would show him on his BRAND NEW clock how 7:30 p.m. looked. Once the regular clock reached the time on his clock, then the game would go on. This turned into a very helpful idea.

Not realizing what I had done when we started this project, I came to the realization that he was grasping the minutes and hours. All on his own, he would turn to his clock while completing his homework assignments in telling time. The minutes just came to him: he was understanding that each slash was a minute and for every five slashes, that would mean that five minutes just went by, and in order for five minutes to pass, that would mean that the second hand went around the clock five times. He would sit in his room and play with his clock for hours. I am so proud of him.

We are entering multiplication tables at the moment. Flashcards work wonderfully. 2x’s tables are a breeze for him 3x, & 4x’s are causing a disturbance. So what I have allowed him to do is this:

The use of blocks/circles (ones that he can draw out on a piece of paper). If he needs to multiply 2 x 3, then he draws out two rows of three;

0 0 0
0 0 0

Then he would add them, this is a new approach for both of us, and I am hoping that the visualization of my idea will help him. Also he can solve this problem by writing out 3, two times, then adding.

Ex: 3 + 3 = 6.

Having a dyslexic child is difficult, however, understanding the problem is half the battle.

Mary Elizabeth Harvell
February 2003

In the classroom that "J" is in all the children change their outdoor shoes, and put on sandshoe. One morning while the children were out of the classroom I decided to try this activity. I got "J" to pair all the shoes up and then to count how many shoes there were. After counting the shoes I then got her to count how many pairs there were. Altogether there were 22 shoes; we then started to count the shoes in 2's, which I hasten to add "J" did extremely well.

I then proceded to explain to her that the two times tables was just like doubling. After practising a few more times "J" really started to understand. I then decided to move on to making her some two times table cards. I found that she very quickly learnt how to match up the times table question with the correct answer. We started to make it a little bit of a game, each day I would time her to see how quickly she could match them up, and then see if the next day she could beat her time from the previous day. Her first time was 92 seconds her last time was 15 seconds, which I think is a magnificent improvement.

Carrying on with "J"s two times tables I decided to make up some of my own work sheets, to retain the information she had learnt. I started off with some very simple sums using a picture of a dog. For example, the question may have had 4 dogs shown and the question would ask how many ears altogether on the four dogs - 4x2 =8. I would then repeat the question using different numbers of dogs.

Once "J" had completed all 10 questions I then gave her a calculator so that she could check her own answers. All were correct, of course. I then went on to use this same method with the 10, 11, and 5 times tables, using different pictures to help her visualize what she was doing. This worked really well for "J" because if she did get stuck, she could actually count the items on the picture to get the correct answer.

"J" was not only rewarded with stickers and team points for doing so well, she also received a certificate for each new times table she learnt. She is presently learning her 3 times tables, and so far is doing pretty well. (L.P., Yorkshire, UK)

At age 11 Lucy. does not have any trouble counting forwards to 100. Backwards is a little troublesome. I asked ucy what she would like to use to help her count. She chose pasta shapes. We laid them out in one row and she counted backwards. This was quite easy when she used her finger and touched each pasta shape as she said its number, but proved difficult when she did not point to shapes but had to recite from memory. We put markers between the tens and it was a bit easier. We repeated this over a few days and she became very proficient at counting backwards without pointing. As a result she can now count backwards from 100 without using the pasta shapes. Also, she has a very good visual memory and she can recall the line of shapes and where the tens markers were to help her if she is having difficulty. (R.H., Switzerland)

• Dyslexia and Math/s - Dyslexia Online Magazine article.

• Perfect Times - online games to practice the multiplication tables.