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.

Went through the posts quickly, so maybe this message sounds like I have not paid attention...

Gussiegrips, so you are in Scotland. My DS is the youngest in his year (end of January born) and he was slower than the other children with number bonds etc. He probably needs more practice than the others (don't know if it's due to his "younger" age), but he gets there at the end. I have to say that we worked a lot at home with number bonds, times tables, now divisions, etc. The school can help, but there are 30 children in his class, so I accepted that we do something at home (not that you are not accepting this, but I just want to say, don't think that the teacher can do as much you can).

When I talked to the teacher (a year ago), she told me that he was FINE, she was not worried at all about him. I think she meant she didn't expect he could do more. I wasn't very happy with this reply. So we worked at home, and after a few months he was moved up his Maths group, and at parents' evening the teacher said "Whatever you are doing, it's working." (well, so he wasn't FINE after all when I asked the first time!).

All this to tell you: yes, listen to the teacher, and then have a plan in your head and follow it through with your child (and with a lot of encouragement and patience - which is not alway easy in a busy household).

What worked for us was:

1. Timez Attach for times tables (if she likes videogames) and we bought a Multiplication chart and have it in the dining room, so he can see it every day (and we point out the square numbers, etc, and now he points out other relationships between the numbers (e.g., all the numbers is the 6 times table are even, the number in the 3 times table go odd-even-odd, so we talk about these things).

2. homemade dominoes with bonds, or addition questions, etc. (have a look at www.mrbartonmaths.com/jigsaw.htm for Tarsia sofware to create them)

3. 10 minutes of boring worksheets (for ex. Kumon books, which are boring and expensive, I know, but offer lots of repetitive questions).

However, although the number bonds and times tables did not click easily for my DS, I could see that when asked to work out a tricky problem, he knew how to think to solve it, so this showed me that he had the ability to think logically, which is what Maths is all about, after all. You might be interested in getting the Bond books for Non verbal reasoning for 7-8 year olds, to develop this kind of reasoning (most children like these puzzles).

Good luck!

Timez Attack (not timez attach)