AIBU to buy DS's maths workbook and let him go through it with a calculator?

[TamponSupport]

DS is 11 and struggles in maths. I suspect dyscalculia but the school say not and it's because he has ASD. They will not let him use a calculator until he is at secondary school, whereas I remember having one when I was 9!
He can't hold numbers in his head and mixes up place value.
After another batch of count the petals (one petal; 10 petals to a flower; ten flowers to a bunch) which he keeps getting wrong and has resulted into two days of tantrums and screen time bans, I think he is also bored with it and hates that he can't do it. We've tried writing it down, but he has difficulty with getting everything into he right columns.

I also think he's been very limited in his exposure to maths because the TA won't move on to the next topic until he has learnt the one he has done. then spends so long on the next topic he's forgotten the one he did before and they have to start from the beginning again

Would it be totally crazy to buy the school books, and let him go through them at home with a calculator so he can see that a) being able to count in your head is not the be all and end all and b) there is more interesting stuff out there than petal counting?

YANBU buy the damned book
YABU the TA knows what's she's doing

I'd do some of the book with him with positive reinforcements (bribes), I went to a ridiculous progressive school in the 60's where it was thought we'd teach ourselves maths if given different coloured blocks to play with.
Surprise, surprise I learnt nothing.
I was caught in the post office without a calculator recently trying to work out multiples of stamp books while everyone stared at me and I got gradually more sweaty and flustered. We all need maths basics and to know our times tables.

To the people saying "just persevere" and that he mustn't have a calculator to aid him because he needs to know it and implying he's just not trying hard enough - you wouldn't say the same if it was suspected dyslexia.

I have a calculator with me wherever I go on my phone and I also have dyscalculia. I get by.

How much of his maths teaching is coming from this TA?
I would be concerned about that. Is he also taught maths by his teacher?
All of it. His teacher has 23 other pupils in the class and is a primary school teacher, not a special school teacher.
I have been concerned with his TA for a long time (I was allowed to sit in on a lesson so I could see how he behaves in school and had to correct her a couple of times) which is why I have tried everything I can think of over the past few years.

I was also thinking along the lines of: if he has to work the sum out by himself, he manages say 4 sums in half an hour. If he has a calculator, he could cover many, many more. The repetitive input, having to copy the number onto the keypad, think about what he's putting into the calculator and seeing the correct answer over and over again might help him remember e.g. what 4x3 is.

Not being able to hold it in his head sound like working memory issue? They should let him have paper for working out that’s a pretty minor accommodation.
For times tables etc, learning them by heart might be best? So he’s not having to hold it in his head to work things out? Times table songs on YouTube are good because they’re catchy!

Your poor ds. My dd was the same and I fought and paid privately for testing and eventually sent her to a progressive private school when she was 10 and they let her use a calculator and GUESS WHAT she turned out to be really good at math. Especially if you put $$$ in front of all the numbers (we're in the USA). DD is now in her second year of University and got an A in advanced logic and statistics. Not bad for the kid who failed her 1 x tables.

And by the way, I went to MIT and got an A in advanced calculus and never learned my multiplication tables and can't add 5 + 7 in my head and at 58 I still count on my fingers. It makes me so mad to see a child tortured by poor understanding of and teaching to individual learning styles and needs.

Can you take him out of school and home school him until he gets properly assessed.

Barring that, DD worked much better when she had as much time as she needed, wasn't humiliated for counting on her fingers and/or writing numbers down AND did much better if concrete things were attached to the numbers. If you said to DD, what is 5x5 she couldn't tell you, but if you said to her, I have five 5 dollar bills, how much money do I have...she could answer it quickly.

learning them by heart might be best
If he could learn them by heart, he would know them by now!

It’s all well and good giving him the calculator now, but why about later on? When he’s in secondary school half of his maths exams will be non-calculator— no exceptions.

I vote Doodle Maths, again.

My daughter is in secondary and they are allowed (in fact encouraged) to use calculators 🤷‍♀️

I would stop torturing your poor son and absolutely get him to use a calculator for the school book

My dd is dyslexic and never managed to learn her timetables off by heart and still managed to get a 6 in her maths gcse.

There are three gcse exams for maths and at least one of them is non calculator. It nay even be two.

Even in secondary there are many topics that they aren't allowed to use a calculator for in maths unfortunately.

Send him to Kumon. DN has Dyscalcula (takes after me) and it has turned it around. It uses Indian / Asian mental maths arithmetic techniques eg reciting to help embed it. My gran taught me in a similar way and I credit the technique for being the reason why I could eventually pass a maths A Level.

This might be a bit far out as a solution, have you ever tried your son with a spreadsheet rather than a calculator?

Would be interesting to see how he did with finding out that to multiply 4 by 5, in one row, you just type each number in a cell and then to write the calculation in another cell.

Let him have bricks or something to arrange in the pattern to produce the right number. Then encourage him to change the numbers and then to change the calculation, to see the connection

This would take away the memory part and let him concentrate on the calculations.

Then start using the opposite calculation (first add, then subtract) or first multiply then divide to 'check' the result in the spreadsheet.

I'm closer to retirement age than primary school and always have a spreadsheet open on my desktop for just these things.

Not an immediate help for school but certainly a big help for me. Apologies if this is no help at all, the problem just sounded a bit familiar and the school does not sound particularly supportive. Good luck.

It sounds like you may well be right about the dyscalculia. Can you get your own assessment? It sounds as if your son is simply not going to learn without expert tuition from a specialist in dyscalculia/dyslexia. I'd strongly advise looking at books by Steve Chinn, probably starting with this one

There’s such an over emphasis on just remembering times tables off by heart. Most adults don’t actually know them like this. They’ve got strategies for working them out quickly. I wonder if anyone has ever tried teaching him strategies rather than just learning nine eights are seventy two with no context.

Based on your scathing reply to perfectly sensible suggestions it sounds like you hold everyone in the same level of disdain not just the poor TA!

if he can't do anything without a calculator, how will he cope with mon'y and change (assuming we continue to use it)

I'm not the best at mental arithmatic, but do have a sense of when the number is correct/in the right ballpark - I find it quite scary when colleagues do something on a calculator or spreadsheet, miskey, forget a decimal or use the wrong formula... and come up with a result that is totally implausible.

The school are in no way qualified to say he doesn't have dyscalculia unless they have had an ed psych in to assess him

Dyscalculia isn’t really a thing (I’m a secondary maths teacher). Any investigation into dyscalculia usually concludes it is poor foundations in maths leading to shaky understanding, or some other SEN such as poor working memory which manifests in maths as a particular difficulty with mental calculation/holding numbers in your head.

He won’t be allowed a calculator in primary because the SATs are heavily based around arithmetic and written calculations.

I think denying him paper to jot down workings is stupid though - there’s no exam where this will happen.

How is he at other areas of maths? Shape? Measuring? Drawing bar charts?

finally The early stages of teaching multiplication do exactly that - use arrays and counting.

Wow this sounds a really complex situation - your poor son.

Also may be that his stress/anxiety /shame around this is further complicating learning - no one can learn when they're panicked /bored /

Clearly he needs some specialist support... Not the TA!! ... If she/they have had 5 years with hardly any learning...

This is completely unethical.

Unsurprising he's got thoroughly bored /frustrated and shamed.

Keep on keeping on!

I learnt my times tables by making up tunes.... I still mentally go through these if it's an element I dobt use frequently.

Talk to the school. Why is a child who struggles and needs teaching the most handed over to the less qualified TA? Let the TA take the top group regularly so she gets a feel for how the most able think and work - what good learning looks, feels and sounds like - and give the less and least able a fair share of the teacher's skill, experience and creativity.

Teachers TAs and Headteachers often look stunned when this is suggested but it makes perfect sense! Now, you can't shake them up like that, OP, but you certainly can ask a probing question or two about how much time your DC has being taught by the actual teacher, not the TA, and what his entitlement is to being taught - by an actual teacher! It might make a huge difference.

Key question: is working with this TA closing the learning gap for your DS and moving him closer to age-expected goals? If yes, ask to be shown concrete evidence of his progress. If no, what are they proposing to do about it?

Meanwhile, check out online resources as PPs have suggested and consider getting him some tutoring if you can afford it. But give school a chance to answer your questions and think about their provision.

In a nutshell, what do people think is going to happen if the brightest and quickest get the top provision from the most expensive professional and the slower strugglers get shunted onto a slow track with someone less well-trained on £15 ph if they're lucky? It's not rocket science.

The best TAs are wonderful and can really accelerate learning; the worst hold children back by plodding unimaginatively or doing the work for the children.

It's not cheating to look up the answer and work out how to do it.

It's not cheating to ask someone to show you how to do it.

Cheating is when you pretend to know something you don't, that's when you're cheating yourself.

So read the poster in my maths classroom at school. If you get him the book and calculator and work through with him so he understands everything to the point he can remember it even after moving on to something else, that's fine. If you're just trying to get him to work through the book so he can fake his way at school, then you're screwing him over.

@noblegiraffe

The school are in no way qualified to say he doesn't have dyscalculia unless they have had an ed psych in to assess him

Dyscalculia isn’t really a thing (I’m a secondary maths teacher). Any investigation into dyscalculia usually concludes it is poor foundations in maths leading to shaky understanding, or some other SEN such as poor working memory which manifests in maths as a particular difficulty with mental calculation/holding numbers in your head.

He won’t be allowed a calculator in primary because the SATs are heavily based around arithmetic and written calculations.

I think denying him paper to jot down workings is stupid though - there’s no exam where this will happen.

How is he at other areas of maths? Shape? Measuring? Drawing bar charts?

Is dyslexia real then?

It's perfectly possible for dyslexia (specific difficulty with reading) to be real (and not due to e.g. not being able to see, not being able to understand English, never having been taught properly)) while dyscalculia isn't (it can be explained by other difficulties - in this case working memory difficulties that also affect other areas of life).

It would be like saying that ASD (difficulty with social communication) exists but a specific learning difficulty in tidying up doesn't (a child can't tidy up but that's because they've never practiced, never learned, or have a much more general organisational difficulty that leads to difficulty remembering to pack their bag for school, writing a passage of text and other things).

Poor kid. How frustrating for him.
I second an online maths site eg Ixl.com which can make things more visual and fun…based on an award after completing a section.
Also could he recite his tables while throwing a ball, jumping on a trampoline, set them to music…?

TamponSupport- I didn’t mean it rude? But if he’s trying to work them out but can’t hold numbers in his head that’s clearly not working for him? My son has SEN, and his working memory is in the 5th percentile, for things like times tables he does what the Ed psych called over learning , so it’s really not necessarily a case of if he could then he would, not if he isn’t learning them in a way that he can. I’m aware that it’s not a case of just easily learning them by heart. It was only an idea because times tables are used throughout all of schooling so it might br worth a try. Even if it’s just one set of times tables per month or whatever