Year 5 child switching numbers

[sittingatmydeskagain]

I've been helping ds1, aged 10, with some maths and verbal reasoning for the local secondary entrance tests.

It's becoming clear that he completely "gets" the questions, but loses marks for mistakes, and sometimes misreading graphs or charts.

This matches what his maths teacher said at parents' evening - but he usually gets 100% on mental maths.

When I watch him, the "silly mistakes" are him switching numbers, so 85 instead of 58 for eg. Usually if he's copying down a calculation. Or he'll get the right answer in the sum, but copy it down wrong.

I know that I do this too (my book keeper at work despairs), but I am wondering whether this is actually fairly common for his age, or are we missing something? His maths and literacy level at school are high, but his spelling, handwriting etc are not great.

He's frustrated, poor boy.

Have you thought of going to a behavioural optometrist? Does he often skip lines / words when reading or lose his place?

Yes, he does. He reads very fast, but will often lose his place.

Yes, I second to get sight checked out thoroughly, as a place to start investigating at least. If that is all OK, then can look for other clues.

Thanks, I'll look into this.

When I do it it's not the reading, it's just that I will be thinking of one number, and write another. I nearly sent someone £5,000 instead of £2,000 because I wrote the wrong figure. Lucky I spotted it .

My brother did that 'writing vs thinking' thing. Was related to his dyslexia and at the time they called it 'visual dyslexia' according to my mum. Not heard of the term nowadays though. However, many dyslexics have co morbidity (coexistence) of more than one difficulty - ranging from dyspraxia, hypermobility, ADHD, add, visual difficulties (tracking, binocular instability, etc.). The visual difficulties are picked up by behavioural optometrists rather than opticians. I know of a couple in Hertfordshire who are particularly good.

TaDaaa - if you could PM me the Herts details, I'd be really grateful.

In some ways he ticks some boxes for dyslexia, but not others. Well, according to what I've Googled.

Of course.

I do that all the time. I know i have a problem so I have taught myself NEVER to write or say a number unless I checked 3 times.
I am dyslexic.

Does he actually understand what each digit in the number represents? Sounds a silly question but it is often the reason children write numbers this way ... they simply don't understand the order is important

Mrz - I'm pretty sure he does. He's very able at mental maths, and is generally covering, and comfortable with, Level 6 work in an extension group in class (he is year 5).

Verbally, he can get 100% on a level 5 paper, or a Bond 11 plus paper, but if he writes the answers, he can get 20 - 30% wrong (last assessment at school was a 5c, but both he and teacher says all misreading graphs or writing numbers wrong).

He's learning to treble check everything, but he gets very frustrated. Btw, this has all come up because he's telling me how upset he is.

My ds 18 does similar buts its to do with short term memory, nothing to do with vision. He is doing a level maths and further maths, but makes silly mistakes like carrying wrong number forward or having calculator on wrong setting. He gets 20% extra time in maths exams. He also has no sense of time.

Being good at mental maths doesn't automatically mean he is good at written numbers. It's a bit like saying he's very articulate so must know how to spell.

I agree does sound like a revisit on place value might be helpful. Exchange games can also help the child understand tens, units, hundreds....