Dyslexia, Dyscalculia and Mathematics

A practical guide

Anne Henderson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136636615
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

Dyslexia, Dyscalculia and Mathematics will be an essential resource for teachers, classroom assistants, and SENCOs who help dyslexic and dyscalculic children with their understanding of mathematics. Written in an accessible style with helpful illustrations, this practical book reveals helpful ways in which to tackle both simple and complex concepts with students of all ages.

This second edition has been updated to include references to using technology that will help children with dyslexia and dyscalculia reinforce their mathematical skills and also contains a number of photocopiable resources that can be used in the classroom. Written by Anne Henderson, who is experienced in teaching language and mathematics to pupils with dyslexia and dyscalculia, this book outlines current thinking in the field and shows how the research methods that have been proven as successful can be used with whole classes of children.

This book encourages flexible methods and gives teachers the confidence to discuss alternative solutions with their pupils and help them achieve success. It is an ideal handbook for parent-teacher programmes and is also suitable for in-service training.

1 Dyslexia and dyscalculia

Section A: Success in mathematics

For many children, success in mathematics can be elusive for a variety of reasons. These could include absence from school when vital parts of a topic are missed, ineffective teaching and difficult home circumstances. In addition slow language acquisition, poor health and other disabilities may affect learning. Before starting school young children have a variety of mathematical experiences that are specific to themselves, whether it is counting toys, seeing numbers on buses or travelling in different time zones on planes. Once in school, they begin structured play and start to learn about numbers. Some children easily acquire skills, see patterns and become good at maths. Many others do not. These children struggle with the basics, and cannot see similarities or make connections, so already they are beginning to fail in maths. They try to keep up with others in the class who seemingly do maths without much effort. In fact, many adults who find maths difficult in everyday life admit that their troubles started at a very early age when they began to ‘fail’ in maths. They were not able to keep pace with their peers and had never caught up.

Individual differences

Individual differences in mathematics have to be considered in order to help children find success. All children have strengths and weaknesses, so teaching has to be tailored to allow for these differences. Strengths in one field and weaknesses in another produces a spiky profile which is almost always present in both the dyslexic and the dyscalculic student. Perhaps the statement by Thomas West (1991) that ‘for some dyslexic children, “easy” is hard and “hard” is easy’ could be responsible for the spiky profile often associated with learning differences.

Unless these differences are taken into account children become discouraged, lose confidence and begin to hate maths. Mathematics involves many skills and concepts that are connected, and children need the ability to understand these connections. Memory, language, sequencing and ordering are some of the important functions that all play a part in enabling children discover success. To progress in mathematics these functions must work together, as new ideas and concepts are continually integrated into problem-solving strategies. Some dyslexic and dyscalculic children are hesitant when trying to give answers to questions because they are using inefficient counting strategies to remember maths facts. Others lack strategies for coping as they do not seem to have grasped how the number system works or recognise the patterns within it. This lack of ‘number sense’ if not dealt with in early years persists through adolescence and adulthood, causing severe problems in the quality of life.

It is important to understand that children who perform badly in mathematics do so not because they do not try, not because parents or teachers have failed, but because of their individual differences with regard to mastering the number system. It is imperative to remember that mathematical ability is not set in stone, so it is possible to intervene successfully provided help is focused on the weakest components.

Section B: Dyslexia

What is dyslexia? Here is one useful definition:

Dyslexia is best described as a combination of abilities and difficulties which affect the learning process in one or more of reading, spelling, writing and sometimes numeracy. Accompanying weaknesses may be identified in areas of speed of processing, short-term memory, sequencing, auditory perception, visual perception, spoken language and fine or gross motor skills. Some dyslexic people have outstanding creative skills, others have strong oral skills. Whilst others have no outstanding talents, they can still have dyslexia. Dyslexia occurs despite normal intellectual ability and conventional teaching. It is independent of socio-economic or language background.

(Miles Dyslexia Centre, Bangor University, 2012)

It is estimated that 10 per cent of dyslexic children are gifted mathematically. The British Dyslexia Association (2011) suggests that 40 to 50 per cent have no signs of problems, which leaves the remaining 50 per cent showing difficulty with some aspects of mathematics. In spite of this Miles and Miles (2004) stated that a high level of success is possible for these children provided they are given appropriate help.

Children who receive teaching that is geared to their learning style are able to master concepts, then whole topics, finally moving on to more advanced work. They become enthused by the magic of patterns within mathematics and begin to love the thrill of solving problems. Sometimes these blossoming mathematicians are not seen in school, but if it was possible to see into the future, it would become clear that all efforts by teachers to make mathematics exciting would have not have been in vain.

Students with specific learning difficulties often reach their potential long after they have left schools and colleges, but it is usually in these places of learning that the spark of their brilliance was lit. Many seem to have potential that is somehow bogged down, stuck in the chaos of simple mathematics. If correct teaching is provided that allows them to understand mathematics, the world will benefit from their great contribution. Enabling dyslexic and dyscalculic children to reach their own fulfilment in mathematics has been the aspect of teaching that personally has been most enjoyable for me.

How dyslexia affects mathematics

Dyslexia is a cluster of symptoms that impede a child's learning ability. The main difficulty is the language of mathematics: reading, spelling, writing, understanding difficult maths words and understanding written problems. Other symptoms include poor memory, perseveration (see page 3), sequencing, directional and organisational difficulties.

Organisation problems

Dyslexic children struggle with organising themselves, often forgetting the day and the time as well as their maths books and equipment. These children often end up with messy pages that no one can read or interpret when they write down answers to maths problems.

Perseveration

The Oxford Dictionary (2012) defines perseveration as ‘to repeat or prolong an action, thought, or utterance after the stimulus that prompted it has ceased’. It describes the action when children look back over a previous completed question to check methods, and in error copy the answer. Professor Miles always described this as being like a song you hear in the morning, and for some unknown reason it plays inside your head all day long.

In reality it is very frustrating because what happens is that children complete problems on a topic (say, length) and some find an answer of, let us say, 46.3 cm. They continue with the rest of the problems, performing different calculations, but recording the same answer, 46.3 cm, for each separate problem. When one very bright student realised that the five complex calculations on Pythagoras he had just completed had identical answers, he described his actions as ‘mad’. The best way to avoid perseveration happening is to look back over work, cover it up completely with a piece of card, then concentrate on the new problem and reach an answer before rechecking. This simple, yet successful, technique has saved a great deal of anguish with many children.

Section C: Dyscalculia

Overview of the problem

Dyscalculia is a specific learning disability that affects approximately 6 per cent of the population. While children with dyscalculia struggle to learn mathematics and lack an intuitive grasp of number, they are not unintelligent and may excel in non-mathematical subjects. It is thought that dyscalculia is caused by a difference in brain function. An interesting statement from Butterworth (2011) provides us with fuel for thought. He says that for dyslexia, when there are the right kinds of intervention, patterns of activation in the relevant part of the reading brain change, making brain activity more normal. By comparison, for dyscalculia, if there is correct intervention will the dyscalculic brain become more normal, or will the dyscalculic learner just find a different way of doing the same task? Obviously more research into this will provide us with an answer.

Reeve (2011) describes dyscalculia like this:

It is often co-morbid with other problems such as dyslexia; sometimes it is very different from dyslexia. I think that the general agreement now is that there is a pure form that is not associated with other learning difficulties. We suspect that it is genetic, or at least a neurological problem in some respects.

Dyscalculia could be compared to having dyslexia with numbers instead of letters. Research into dyscalculia is still far behind the research into dyslexia. A child who struggles in maths lessons often begins to develop a fear of maths which leads to much anxiety and loss of self-esteem. When this occurs it can affect all aspects of life, not just maths, so it is essential that we recognise dyscalculia as soon as possible, before it impacts negatively on self-esteem. Chinn (2007) recognises dyscalculia thus:

As a basic indicator, the child will be performing below expectations for no obvious reason …. This underachievement may manifest itself in specifics such as problems with knowing the value of numbers … not realising that 9 is one less than 10, or being able to rapid recall basic number facts.

Just as there is no single set of signs that characterise dyslexia, there is no one cause of dyscalculia. Those who have dyscalculia usually have great difficulties with many aspects of basic numbers, often described as number sense. Without having a firm base or a strong foundation on which to build a number awareness, these children may struggle all their lives to deal with numbers and our number system.

Warning signs

If a child:

• has a poor sense of direction and keeps getting ‘lost’ in school;
• struggles with any kind of mental maths;
• is unable to estimate number quantities;
• seems to be acquiring good reading, writing and speaking skills, but is slow with counting, knowing when to add, subtract, multiply, divide when solving maths problems
• struggles reading numbers and recalling numbers in sequence;
• has problems with telling the time, finishing work in time and estimating passage of time;
• is not able to record their work properly;
• struggles with money, understanding the value of coins and shopping.

Difficulties for dyslexic and dyscalculic children

Almost all dyslexic and dyscalculic children use immature and inconsistent methods to calculate, and even when they have mastered a method in one topic they are unable to transfer those skills to another topic.

Dyslexic children have difficulties reading accurately written maths problems and numbers written in words, while many dyscalculic children are able to do this easily. However, both groups struggle to read, for example:

• speed on a speedometer
• temperature on a thermometer
• directions correctly from a map
• and understand that 13 is thirteen and 31 is thirty one.

Dyslexic children struggle with remembering how to spell and write maths words, and both groups struggle with all or some of the following:

• the order and value of numbers in the number system
• counting accurately
• copying numbers correctly often reversing them
• patterns in the number system (1 + 2 = 3, 11 + 2 = 13, 21 + 2 = 23)
• basic number bonds (2 + 8 = 10)
• estimation
• knowing that the maths symbol + means add
• left and right
• times tables
• recognising where numbers are on a clock face
• telling the time on an analogue clock face
• using a calculator correctly
• a formula and how to use it
• place value, recognising or seeing a decimal point
• fractions and percentages.

‘Pure dyslexia’ and ‘pure dyscalculia’

It could be said that those with ‘pure dyslexia’ h...