What about DYSCALCULIA MAKES MATH SO HARD? 

DYSCALCULIA WEBINAR TAKEAWAYS

• Spot dyscalculia in the classroom and at home

• Identify deficient processes and skills that impair learning

• Inattention or failure to engage?

• Identify and prevent math anxiety

• Instruct in the language of mathematics

• Expedite deep understanding, mental flexibility, and logical reasoning

• Equip students with relevant tools and strategies for understanding and reasoning about numbers in context and in symbolic form

TOPICS  

(1) Renee shares personal experiences with dyscalculia and dyslexia. 

(2) Audience is asked who, why, and what they need to know.

(3) Dyscalculia is a collection of deficiencies that compound to impair quantitative reasoning. 

(4) MLD has many origins and presentations.  Dyscalculia Research

(5) Insufficient Working Memory (the mental counter space used to consider and operate on ideas). 

(6) Number sequencing and Procedural Memory may be weak. 

(7) Weaknesses in visuospatial-directional-sequential processing. 

(8) Visual Memory weakness. 

(9)  Auditory Memory weakness. 

(10)  Cognitive Thresholds overwhelmed.  

(11) Emotion and Historical Experience. 

(12) Solutions: Deep understanding of the language of Mathematics (ideas, words, symbols, syntax, the decimal system).

                        Utilize auxiliary memory (references, place value chart, models).

                        Achieve Math Language Fluency. 

PRESENTER INTRODUCTION  

Renee has a Bachelor's Degree in Communications; training and certification in the diagnosis of learning disabilities and dyslexia and dyscalculia therapy; a Master's Degree in Special Education; a Specialist Certificate in Distance Education; and a Master of Education Degree in Instructional Design. Renee has practiced since 1992, held  leadership positions on school boards for 20 years, and has served on executive boards of nonprofit organizations since 1995. For 30 years, she's maintained Dyscalculia.org, a nonprofit resource for dyscalculia, dyslexia, dysgraphia, and other syndromes that hinder efficient learning and living. 

Renee has dyscalculia. An early and voracious reader, Renee worked hard to conceal her struggles with math. She attended college at 14, yet recalls not understanding zero in a 7th-grade math class. In the Honors Track in a private high school, she insisted on lower math, but disruptive students left her in tears.  She attempted Algebra 6 times. When the university queried her guidance counselor, they rewarded Renee's tenacity with early admission and a scholarship. 

At UW, advisors laughed when Renee announced she wanted to be an engineer. She failed remedial Algebra, and wrote a letter to the professor, listing her brain glitches; it later became The Dyscalculia Checklist. She was successful with 1:1 testing, which allowed the catching and correcting of dyscalculic mistakes, verbal reasoning, illustration, and color-coding.  

In college, her fiancé excelled in design, drafting, and understanding mechanical concepts, yet claimed he couldn't read the textbooks. Testing uncovered dyslexia and a 2nd-grade reading level. Orton-Gillingham dyslexia therapy was successful.  

When another math class was required, Renee tested for MLD and was diagnosed with dyscalculia, but the university responded with insults and no support. 

When married, Renee studied to be a dyslexia therapist because dyslexia can be inherited. After practicing for 6 years, she pursued an M.S. in Special Education, and Professor Mahesh Sharma supplied ample information for her focus on dyscalculia. In 1996, she created a website to aggregate research on dyslexia and dyscalculia, best practices, programs, tools, books, resources, and advocacy. It eventually became Dyscalculia.org, a popular global resource.

WHAT IS DYSCALCULIA? 

Dyscalculia, a syndrome, is a collection of symptoms that individually, and collectively, create various degrees of learning and living challenges.  

•  Dyscalculia Research and Dyscalculia Research Centers and Dyscalculia Research Timeline

Dyscalculics may experience many early and persistent difficulties with left-right confusion; reading clocks, gauging/tracking time; calendars; remembering dates, numbers, faces, names, and facts; planning; organizing; counting; sequencing; visualizing; motor memory, sequencing, coordination, execution (tying shoes, sports, dance, riding a bike, drawing, penmanship); 

Specific Learning Disorders (SLDs) in Mathematics, Reading, and Written Expression are defined in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), published by the American Psychiatric Association. SLD is defined as a "Specific Learning Disorder-- with impairment in Mathematics (315.1), Reading (315.0), or Written Expression (315.2). SLD is "a neurodevelopmental disorder of biological origin manifested in learning difficulties and problems in acquiring academic skills markedly below age level and manifested in the early school years, lasting for at least 6 months, not attributed to intellectual disabilities, developmental disorders, or neurological or motor disorders."

More on Dyscalculia symptoms, terms, definitions, and laws.

DYSCALCULIA CHARACTERISTICS

• cannot keep up with math lessons

• uses inefficient and primitive strategies for counting and problem-solving (fingers, tally marks, dots, repeated + or -)

• becomes overwhelmed, tears up, frustrated, anxiety, panic, mental block/ blanks out / can't retrieve learned information

• under-performs in spite of adequate or extraordinary effort and practice, high intelligence, excellent ability to attend/focus/persist

• disorganized: papers, writing, numbers, dots, problem-solving, preparation order of operations, motor planning, etc.

• sequencing difficulties: steps, operations, reasoning, motor planning, manipulatives, speech, recall

• takes an inordinate amount of time to complete work - thinks slowly, works deliberately but with errors

• may think quickly but makes prediction errors, perseveration errors, errors in signs, operations, writing/speaking/reading/reasoning. 

• appears disconnected - not engaged, lost, unable to process and perform as expected: (can attend, but engagement is lost when the student is unable to comprehend or make mental connections). 

• can repeat patterns, but soon forgets, in spite of typical or extra practice

• accidental number-order and recall errors when copying, writing, reading, speaking, and thinking

• difficulty with time:  perceiving and managing time

• difficulty with direction: overwhelmed by directional sequences in arithmetic, changing classes, navigating, geography

• weak pattern recognition, memory, and recall;  clocks / telling time  (visual-spatial weakness, orientation, organization)

• doesn't register all information seen, especially details of fast action (visual processing: speed, perception, processing)

• difficulty repeating demonstrations, difficulty remembering sequences of operations  (weak motor sequencing and planning)

• "careless errors": switched operations and signs, borrowing, carrying, alignment, number mixups, omissions, insertions

• loses track when counting, hesitates at pattern transitions (19 to 20),

• cannot hold numbers in mind (working memory)

• difficulty memorizing math facts and procedures (inconsistent memory and retrieval)

• easily frustrated or overwhelmed

• avoids math, experiences anxiety

• imperfect retrieval of quantitative information

• limited ability to imagine or visualize abstract concepts or images without seeing them

• poor number sense, or the ability to estimate or compare quantities

• inappropriately preserves a number, operation, or idea and repeats it erroneously  (perseveration)

DYSCALCULIA SOLUTIONS

• A Math Look by Dyscalculia.org

• Dyscalculia.org

• Dyscalculia Remediation

• Remedial Programs