Brilliant kid struggling in school
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| Tue, 04-04-2006 - 11:19pm |
David has been struggling in math a bit, because he hasn't memorized his basic addition and subtraction facts. He REFUSES to practice at home, and wouldn't even look at the electronic "game" I got from Amazon dot com. He gets stomach aches if he thinks about math.
Well, the other day, I was going through a box of old stuff, and I came across something very interesting. When David was 4 years and 8 months old, before he had had any school whatsoever, I made up a math game for him, just for fun. It was full of word problems. He had taught himself to read by osmosis, and had no trouble reading the problems. I remember sitting with him, and he did these problems easily. I'll give a few examples:
1. You have five boxes of Christmas ornaments. Each box contains five ornaments. How many ornaments are there all together?
2. What if you only had three of those boxes? How many ornaments would you have then?
3. John had a box of chocolates. There were 11 chocolate-covered cherries and 11 chocolate-covered green beans. He ate one of the green beans and said, "Yuck!" How many candies are in his box now?
4. He threw the rest of the green beans into the green recycle bin and ate ten chocolate-covered cherries. His baby brother also ate a cherry. How many candies are left in the box?
5. One half plus one half (written in English and in numbers) =
6. x=20
y= one-tenth of x
What is x-y?
There were more questions, but those were the first six. He got them all right, and had NO TROUBLE. I didn't even have to read the questions to him or explain them, other than making sure he knows what the symbols represent. He wasn't even five years old yet, and hadn't set foot in a classroom.
And yet, four years later, he gets stomach aches when he thinks about doing math, because he hasn't memorized his basic facts. WHY? Oh, and you notice that he was easily able to read all that? Well, he's still reading at about a third grade level. Not too shabby for a second-grader, I know. But why has he been reading at the same level since he started school?
I have never showed this math word-problem thing to the IEP team, because it was lost, and then forgotten. There was another thing, done at around the same time, though. It was a similar thing that involved coloring dots on a number line for the answers. It was slightly simpler word problems. I made two pages that were exactly the same, because I thought the first one might be too messy to for him to read. The one that he answered (all correctly) is lost. All I have is the one that he hadn't written on and my memory that he did really well on it.
I've got an IEP meeting on the 13th, and I think I'll bring that paper. I can't prove that he did it before he was five, but the numbers he wrote are formed kind of funny, like a little kid might do. It's sad to think that he's so smart, and yet he's struggling with this basic stuff. I remember being worried that this might happen, but I had forgotten just how smart he is/was. I'm wondering how to help him.
Just thought I'd share this.

It might give some insight into how to teach him math and other things as well as what he can do when not anxious.
Can they teach him touch math or let him use a calculator just to get rid of the anxiety over the facts. Perhaps if they even just take the stress off learning the facts for a while and focus on word problems or something similar.
When Cait was 6 she went through triennial testing. I was amazed at how well she did word problems but all the word problems where concrete and she was able to picture. ex. If you have 6 ducks and 4 swim away, how many are left. Well, miss Cait is like Temple Grandin in that she thinks in pictures. She easily can come up with the answers for that becuase she could picture them. However, even in 5th grade she was still sketchy on her math facts. She is getting better but if she has a long problem to do she instantly forgets her facts. 7+8 means nothing to her, but if you tell her she has 7 horses and buys 8 more, BOOM, 15. She also has trouble with remembering all the steps of math.
Math is Cait's downfall unfortunately. We will be lucky to get through the year with a passing grade because they don't teach to her strengths. They dont teach in a way she can learn. I was letting her fail to make the school more responsible but I do think in this particular instance, I will need to teach her math using the way she thinks so she can understand.
Now if I can just figure out how to divide a horse into fractions I will be all set.
Renee
(PS sounds like alot of David's problems are anxiety related with math)
Kyle and Hannah are like that too. Kyle gets like 89% on Iowa basic skills tests for concepts and estimation, & Problem solving and data interpretation, but only 57% for computation. He still struggles with the facts. Even though the psycologists testing showed he could do high level math like geometry and algebra the teachers can't get past that he can't quickly reciet his math facts.
I used to make up word problems for Hannah too when she was in preschool. She loved them. But she'd tell you know she hates math because they keep making her do timed math fact tests. Its idiodic!
Samantha
Renee,
you can use bags of feed for horses for fractions. Also you can use a fraction of the number of horses in a certain corral or at a show etc.
Betsy
sounds like anxiety is part of the problem, but also it may be that the numerals on the page don't mean anything. Weston is great in math, and verbally he can tell me all his facts. If you shoot them at him quickly when doing a word problem he gets them every time. however, when there is a whole page of them w/ someone keeping time, he may get one row done. Last year his teacher and I decided it was not necessary for him to do them. He knew them when asked just couldn't do the test. He used a multiplication chart to look them up for basic homework as well. Recalling them at random is not particularly useful anyway. I might suggest you write into his IEP that he have another way of testing him (word problem format w/o time) for next year, something that shows he knows the facts or that he can do the math but that takes away the anxiety and plays to his strengths.
Betsy
Wow! David is amazing. I am pretty sure he is just plain anxious. SO a different style of teaching might help. Keep working with him on facts in a fun way. Like my brother used to play this game with number. It goes like this- the first person starts with a number and also makes up the rule like the next # should be in steps of 3 or 5 (something like that). Then you have to tell the answer quickly.
Sravan has major anxiety when it comes to creative writing. I am working with him at home by giving random topics and he has to come up with 10 facts. Next step would be to organize them. One step at a time.
take care,
Anandhi.