Is this worrying for start of year four

[Bearlionfalcon]

I’m really worried about DC1’s maths - DC is 8 and at the start of year four. How abnormal is this for a child at the start of year four, and how should I try to address it, both at home and with the school?

• DC really, really struggles with the concept of rounding up and down. seemed to not have grasped the understanding that 50 is the midpoint between 1 and 100, or which numbers fall on which side of that.

• Still forgetting about place value - one homework question asked DC to add a three digit number to a four digit number and DC added a zero to the end of the three digit number to make the two of them ‘line up‘ - only corrected this when we pointed out the error.

• Was unable to tell me what change one would expect from £15 if something cost £1

DC is dyslexic (diagnosed last year) and already has a learning plan, but so far this has centred mainly on spelling, writing and reading. That has improved a lot over the past year. I think I’m more worried about the maths now - don’t know if this is dyslexia too or whether DC also has dyscalculia as well?

Exhausted! TIA for any advice

Ask the teacher: Are they meeting expected levels? If not, what are school doing to help?

Thanks for the advice. I’ve requested a meeting with the teacher about it. I think my DC does everything they can to avoid showing the teacher how much they are struggling - almost has this down to a fine art…

The second one is a very common error if doing column addition.

third one would worry me a bit but can your child usually do sums like that but was tired or is this standard? Giving cash pocket money often helps with these skills.

Yes ask the teacher. However; when our DC were at primary school the maths teaching was utterly dismal so it might be poor teaching.

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Thanks @SilkAndSparklesForParties - I thought Kumon was about stretching advanced kids who were really good at maths, is it not?

@Octavia64 it’s a good question. If I force her to really think about it she will get it. But she has never developed that instinctive muscle memory of numbers/ quantities / number bonds where she knows 15 minus one is 14, if that makes sense. I’ve noticed in other areas for example the eight times table which we are trying to learn… she knew 8 x 8 was 64 because she remembered it but then when I asked her what was 8 x 12 she guessed 32. It worried me not that she got it wrong so much as the fact it didn’t seem to occur to her that 8x 12 couldn’t possibly be a lower number than 8 x8 IYSWIM

I sometimes think that during years 1, 2 and 3 when she was struggling with undiagnosed dyslexia and poor reading skills, she basically spent about 90 per cent of her mental energy on either worrying about being ‘discovered’ to not understand things or trying to cover up that she couldn’t do things. Post diagnosis and with some better literacy and pastoral support, her anxiety is less now and she is better able to read questions and work out what’s being asked of her but I’m worried she has some big gaps in her learning from that time.

It's a long time since my dc did Kumon but it was all about dinning in the number bonds, patterns, making them innate. It was priceless for DS who wasn't at all mathsy.

All of those things about recall are common dyslexic problems. Dyslexia makes it harder to retain things like number bonds and times tables. It also makes it harder to use the working memory in the moment to reason "12x8 will be bigger than 8x8". If given more time, she may have been able to reason that out, but she was focusing on rote memories at that time and so she didn't apply the logic.

So yes, she does seem to have difficulties given that she is at the start of year 4, but these are in line with a diagnosis of dyslexia.

That makes a lot of sense. Thank you. You sound like you know your stuff! Do you have any suggestions on how I can help make this stuff any easier for her?

That's where the challenge comes in!

There are different schools of thought, in terms of "working with" the dyslexia or trying to attack head on. I'm not sure if that's clear but I'll try to use an example to explain.

So you could go down the approach that rote memory is likely to be a relative weakness and therefore you focus on strategies eg. Learning how to use 8x2=16 and 8x10=80 and put them together. Or you could think that roat memory is likely to be a relative weakness, so they need more exposure to each fact to memorize it. I would say the approach you take will need to be led in part by her emotional reaction. If trying to memorize will make her stressed and anxious about maths, or will take much longer, then working around may be the way forward.

A very important thing to highlight is that dyslexia isn't the same for everyone. The diagnostic report should tell you in much more detail what the actual differences and needs are.

I think people (many schools included) often underestimate the extent of dyslexia. It absolutely doesn't just affect reading and writing.

Thanks so much @ThesebeautifulthingsthatIvegot . Her dyslexia report said high IQ (125) but relatively poor processing speed. If you let her sit with a maths question and she is not stressed or anxious she can usually figure it out, but the rapid recall of times tables, or doing mental calculations on the spot, can be a nightmare for her. Having said that I was still a bit flummoxed by her not being able to do 15-1. But looking back I think maybe I threw her with putting it in terms of money (which she is terrified of as she finds it hard) and also she was pretty tired and hungry when we had that conversation!
Thanks for explaining the two approaches, I think we probably need to try a bit of both.
I think you’re so right that people underestimate the impact of dyslexia. It affects her so profoundly. When she was diagnosed we got the whole ‘it’s not a bad thing, it’s a strength!!’ From her headteacher. It’s taken a while to explain to them that this is not how she experiences it. She is also an expert on hiding the extent of her struggles from teachers as she hates to stand out, which doesn’t help!

In classrooms they also use number grids 1-100, times table grids, and physical things like Base Ten and plastic money, google will show you all these things. We also had number place things but I cannot remember what they are called. We did used to make them write out numbers so 472 would be 400, 70 and 2 meaning they can see what a number is made up from.

Money is something children just don't play with these days, most parents tap a card so we had plastic money.

A lot of children will waste time in a lesson because they know maths finishes in 10 minutes and then it is break and something different after break. I used to help the low ability children stay on task and had a small group to work with. Unfortunately there just isn't the budget to staff all classrooms with LSA/TAs.