weird combination of dyscalculia and way ahead with reading?

[gussiegrips]

DD is 8. She's the youngest in her year and has rotten parents who didn't defer her

She's a proper bookworm - by which I mean she devours them and has a tremendous recall of what's happened and great insights into what's going on in the story. Teachers all very excited about her reading and comprehension and volcabulary - at parents' night her new teachers said they'd assessed her literacy at beyond a 12 year olds.

Smashing.

Only, she can't count.

Her previous teacher had noted her superdooper reading, but paid more attention the fact that any time she's presented with a number she bursts into tears...and had done some work which suggested dyscalculia.

DD's able to count with something physical - so, let her use fingers, cubes, buttons and she can work out sums and do her multiplication tables. Without something to hold or look at, may as well be talking to her in Greek.

She has no concept of numbers - eg. if she has a desire for soemthing she's got no idea if it's going to take her a week to save up her pocket money, or thirty. She struggles to tell the time, she can do her 0, 1, 2, 5, 10, 11 times tables if you start at the beginning - but, fire "what's 2 x 7?" at her and she's got to count it up from teh beginning.

It's as if she has no notion of where to start with numbers. She still reverses numbers and her written work looks like a hen's scratched across the paper... writing words is fine.

I can't decide whether this is because the focus on early years education has been on reading, which she's not had to TRY with. So, now she's really having to try, she hasn't got a clue how to go about that and is a bit lost?

Or, is it possible to be all clever with literacy, and all dunce with numeracy?

Got any ideas about how to approach the school with this? I'm concerned that if she doesn't get her multiplication tables licked this year she's sunk.

I spoke to her (very nice and very capable) teacher - who gave her a multiplication table chart and was very reassuring...but, she acutally said "there is a finite amount of time we can spend on tables, and if she doens't learn them then she can just use the chart"

REally? HAve I misunderstood what she said? Because, I interpret that as "if you don't learn it in time we won't bother helping you to catch up"

I don't want to make a fuss, and I am confident that the school know what they are doing - but I don't think this years teachers (it's a job share) have really grasped the absolute crapness of her numeracy - because DD masks well in class and says "oh yes, I see" when, actually, she doesn't and then I have to deal with the weeping and my efforts to help are just making it worse.

If you've read this far, thanks.

Shame as I was offering free maths resources for Dyscalculia, but they have decided you are not eligable for this help

You can't advertise - and your advertising revenue creates income for you, so it's a small business.

And you were talking a load of tripe.

If you are feeling that altrusitic, pay the £50 to MN and advertise properly.

And it's eligible. Hope your educational 'help' is better than your spelling

I had offered free help to a couple of your members with children with learning difficulties in the spectrum of Dyscalculia, seems like you have taken the position of GOD and denied these people the help they are asking for, perhaps you are in a better position to offer this help than i am???

Perhaps I am

Not GOD (is there a reason for the capitalisation? ), just another poster - MN relies on a poster-reporting system, and they don't allow advertising.

Don't get your knickers in a twist at me because you can't be arsed to pay!

Perhaps you should practice what you preach and remove all the paid for advertising you present to your followers, or do they not know you make money from them??

So why are there umpteen maths websites links on the post asking for website links to paid for sevices??

It's practise.

I have no followers, you loon - I am not MNHQ! Take it up with them.

Why would i want to pay to offer something for free??

Because they are not posted by the website owners, advertising their business. They are other posters, recommending sites they find useful.

Cue sockpuppets?

Because it's your business - and to advertise it, you have to pay a fee.

You make money from the adverts you host on your 'free' website.

Oh, and you upped loads of threads to spam on them.

That's annoying too, and Not Allowed.

I only offered help to two individual kids you obviously do not appreciate Dyscalculia and the fact there is little to no help as the government are yet to recognise this as a learning difficulty. You can pay for various tests, but there is no follow up help available once diagnosed.

You upped threads to spam on them, and created a thread of your own, all with basically the same post - all four were pulled for that reason.

I'm not sure that your not following guidelines does mean that I don't appreciate dyscalculia, but you are entitled to your garbled opinion.

To interrupt this "discussion". There's a great book "The dyscalculia toolkit" by Ronit Bird ( and I am not Ronit Bird or the publisher or anyone else that might make money from the book )

It uses the cuisenaire rods mentioned earlier. My suggestion would be to get the book and some rods and work very slowly through the suggestions in the book giving your dd loads of time to "overlearn" and experience success with stuff she can already do. Let her just play around and make things with the rods too but keep them as a special toy to play with for a short ( half-hour) period at a time. ( It might be your best strategy to do only this for a few weeks).

On the playing side, log cabins are good, walls are good, making squares or triangles or jig saws are good. Without knowing it her number bonds will improve because you need the different lengths to make the things. So when you run out of fives, you can use 4s and 1s or 2s and 3s iyswim. And seesaws too. If you balance a ten on a 2, you can then play with the things that make it rock or balance. And she will soon discover that it also depends on where you put them. It's all maths!

DD1 who is dyslexic, finds tables and telling the time difficult even though she can do algebra and difficult maths.

The only way we got anywhere with analogue clocks was to put 1-12 on the floor and move Playmobil people to 1/4 past 20 to etc.

Books and rods came today - thanks very much for the top tips!

She's settled down a bit, is less tearful about her homework. So, her teacher is happy and sure that it's an anxiety thing...but, the work they've been doing has been more problem solving than sums on paper. Which is interesting, if you give her a sum in the form of "we've taken 4 buckets of water out the fish tank. Each bucket is 5l - how much water do we need to put in?" then she's able to process the information (using her fingers)

Ask her "what's 4x5?" and she goes all rabbit-in-the-headlights.

So, you are all quite right. I feel much better about it, we just need to get on with some practice, it'll do me good too. TBH, I'd never heard of a number bond until her teacher mentioned it...

Gussie, that's great.

Do you play cards in your household? Snap, matching pairs, cheat, patience? They all deal in numbers. Or blackjack. And darts. When she is just a little mire confident teach her darts, do it as a family, unless she is dyspraxic. It is the very very best thing for mental arithmetic.

When she is starting to do fractions, take her to the races and explain how odds work. She is obviously highly intelligent so it will make sense to her. And divvying up a round cake between the five of you might be fun.

Just because she is a good reader , it doesn't mean she will be good at maths.
Maths is a higher level skill, reading isn't.Even people with very low intelligence can be taught to read.

It doesn't sound like dyscalculia to me. I think she has just not reached the stage of development where she can cope with abstract concepts yet.This usually happens at around 7 so your DD is a bit behind but not enough to worry yet!

Well, interesting times...

rod thingies showed me just how bad her grasp of number bonds are. 2, 5 and 10 are ok, but anything involving a 6, 7, 8 or 9 are not.

She doesn't grasp that addition/multiplication/division/subtraction are really the same thing.

Nor does she grasp "rounding up" 19 to an imaginary 20 to do mental arithmentic.

So, I had a chat with her teacher - who was a little defensive. I get that, I must seem like I'm becoming a pain...

In her opinion, there isn't really a problem - so, she started running through the number bonds...and DD really stumbled.

"Oh. Right, but we've been through this, several times"

And, then told me that some people just never grasp multiplication tables and have to always use calculators...we can't all be good at everything.

Must admit, got a bit narked.

"so, are you telling me that this is the pinnacle of her mathematical development? At 8 years old?"

So, I suggested teacher showed me waht DD SHOULD know, we'll do stuff this week and we'll review it on Friday again. That'll give teacher a chance to have a proper look and chat to her job share.

I do appreciate it's not easy for the teacher - but she told me that there's a big spread of abilities in the class so not everyone will get taught effectively. Frankly, that just pissed me off. Not a jot do I give about everyone else's kid, only the one in tears at homework in my house...

Oh, and I agree - I'm not convinced she's dyscalculic.

But, she's not been learning as quickly as the others and has been left behind...so now her confidence in her mathematical ability is in her boots.

Which could be easily fixed. And, if there is more to it, then the teachers need to assess her - what's not helpful is one teacher saying "she's got a problem with numbers" and antoehr one saying "she's absolutely fine"

Hey ho. At least I feel like the teacher has now seen what I'm concerned about.

Gussie,

On the one hand rage about the school's approach, on the other great that the cuisinaire rods have indicated where there is an issue.

Tbh, once she grasps this her confidence should rise.

It's like swimming. At one point you can't do it, then you can do some bits but are afraid of going out of your depth, then it comes together.

Thanks, whistler.

I'm not really raging about the school - but, I Am Cross that we've been brushed off...if they'd had a decent handover from P4 to P5 she'd have had 6 months of progress instead of faffing about.

So, am going to be Grown Up About It. Frustrating, our wee school's a great school, but they are awfully good at telling us what they are awfully good at...