How can I help DD2 - what would you do?

[lougle]

DD2 is struggling with maths.

She's been doing 'bridging through 10', but clearly doesn't understand what she's doing when she bridges to 10. She plucks numbers out of the air. She said 'It was really tricky and I couldn't have help from because I've had too much help already. I've got another page to do in class and that's even trickier.'

I found a bridging through 10 game on the internet, which she enjoyed (because the spaceman jumps towards the rocket, then the rocket flies off into space) but she was clearly guessing the numbers.

I asked her today whether she'd done more bridging through 10 and she said:

'No. Yesterday we were 'trying to decide the right strategy to use.'
Me: 'Ok, what was the problem you were doing?'
DD2: 'There was no problem.'
Me: 'Sorry, DD2, I mean 'what sums were you doing.'
DD2: 'Starting with 9 and adding different numbers, or starting with different numbers and adding 9.'
Me: 'Ok, how did that go?'
DD2: 'A bit easier - I did have help from quite a lot. I got them all wrong though.'
Me: 'Oh, why?'
DD2: 'Well I was trying to decide which club is the best: Mrs H (ELSA) or Dragonflies. But it's a very tricky decision, so it was very difficult. But I did think about it quietly.'
Me: 'Weren't you meant to be doing maths?'
DD2: 'Yes, but the decision was tricky and it took a long time to think about.'
Me: 'Right What did you decide?'
DD2: 'I didn't decide, it was too tricky.'

So, I said to the SENCO that she's struggling, I don't think she gets the concepts and she's an explicit learner, so should I be breaking it all down and try to teach her it at home, or let the teacher get on with it in class?

The SENCO said not to teach her at home because it may confuse her and the teacher knows where DD2 is 'at' with it, plus she worries that it might create more pressure. She commented that 'DD2 isn't even there, is she' when I relayed my conversation this morning.

My issue is that DD2 knows her number bonds to 10. She doesn't know how that connects to bridging through 10. She doesn't know what she's doing. Or why she's doing it.

DD2 will not learn by exposure and osmosis!

So...what do I do? Sit back and allow her to stagnate? She's going to really struggle.

That's what I thought of doing, Polter. Not with M&Ms though

DH and I thought of making a physical number bar, with numbered holes for pegs. Then have one red coloured peg, which she could put in the first number of the sum. The other pegs could be, say, blue. Red lines either side of the 10.

So if the sum was 8 + 6, she could put the red peg in the 8, and see that she needed 2 blue pegs to get to 10, then she only has 4 blue pegs left to put after the 10, which takes her up to 14.

I think that would demonstrate to her what happens when she adds the numbers together using the 'bridging to 10 method.'

But I don't want to confuse her, and I can see that she might then find it hard to go to school and just have a crappy number line.

Can you beg, borrow, or buy numicon?

Or get the school to and send it home? Or just use it there?

Lego can work for some things, if you want to stick with mostly even numbers.

Or you can make your own numicon shapes if you're desperate

Mrz often recommends egg boxes. You can shape them and drop counters/peas/sweets in them!?

Soo....the golden question....perhaps?

If school SENCO has told me not to do stuff at home (other than number bonds to 10, which she already knows, I've just tested her and she was faultless with recall of about 1 second each time) and I was to do stuff at home, how would I evidence that the progress made was because of the home stuff rather than general progress?

I'm thinking about this and thinking 'do I need to tread carefully?'

If I help DD2 progress at home, then that will be seen as 'progress' in response to the support measures put in place (maths with LSA 1:6 ratio; fortnightly 1:1 ELSA; twice weekly 2:5 nurture group).

Would I need to somehow find a way of baselining, measuring and recording progress at home?

I'm just very aware that we're already ½ way through year 2 and it's taken me over a year to get to this stage, which is really just an acknowledgement that she's not happy at school.

Bearing in mind that I have been given no progress information about DD2 since the end of Year 1 and she has SATs this year.

Arrgh I hate it that I even have to consider whether giving help to my DD is going to help her or harm her in the longer term

DD3 went to montessori preschool, zzzzz - it is beautiful stuff. So simple but so incredibly adaptable.

Get a batch of second hand Numicon shapes. You don't need the whole kit and caboodle.
Some here on Ebay

I have never seen anything as brilliant as Numicon to help with Maths. I have seen children transformed like butterflies in front of me with it. Fabulous. It eliminated the mind numbing boarding of counting in ones, which, lets face it, is enough to induce a coma in anyone beyond the no. 5.

Agree also that Montessori fab.
ABAers love Montessori.

'Arrgh I hate it that I even have to consider whether giving help to my DD is going to help her or harm her in the longer term'

THAT is a question none of us are able to answer. And I don't think you yourself ever will.

And even if you DO help her, and evidence that it was YOU that helped here, there is no guarantee that the evidence will be dismissed either because you are a mere parent who can't possibly have achieved that despite the evidence or because her new found skills show that she is capable really so she must just be lazy in class.

I took the approach that I could not let ds fail to prove a point. Others who did do this seem to have got better provision for their children, or at least a 'slightly' easier path. Though this is quite possibly just my perception rather than a truth.

One way to look at it is that she will always need help, and the school will never be able to provide it, so you may as well just crack on with low expectations of them and fill in the gaps as best as you can yourself.

Video records are quite good for base lining and showing evidence though tbh I think your skills at data capture and use are hardly your weak point.

Thanks for the encouragements. I have to do something, don't I?

The SENCO is lovely and I think she is 'for' DD2. I think she just doesn't quite realise the extent of DD2's comparmentalisation of learning.

She had perfect recall of number bonds to 10 as number bonds , but there is a conceptual leap between knowing them and using them to help you do calculations.

The thing is that regardless of whether she can do it, she's not even engaged in class, hence the disclosure that she was debating the comparative merits of her ELSA session and her nurture group session. In class, she just drifts into the background and floats away.

I'll have a look at the numicon and get a plan together.

Video would be great. I wondered if I needed to do something more formal in terms of data (because I know you ABAers take reams of it), or whether that's just overkill....I don't want to stuff DD2 up by being too casual about the whole thing.

I'm scared for her. She'll be a junior next year and she's unraveling before my eyes even now.

Ok, this could be quite exciting.

Oxford University Press have some free resources, one of which is a focus on how to use numicon to bridge through 10!

So I could perhaps get some numicon and 'play' some bridging games. Or even, in the meantime, make some numicon style cards and cut them out...

LOL at taking reams of data. If only you knew......

Seriously, you just need to take data at intervals. They can be regular or irregular, seconds apart or months depending what you are doing. But you do have to be clear what you are measuring and that doing so is meaningful and gives you exactly the information you are asking for.

You'd be surprised about how much you can learn just fiddling around with the numicon shapes.

Gah, I wish I could lend you my set but I'm about to start using them regularly (in theory, - who actually knows what is going to happen)

The school sounds comparatively good Lougle. It's just that the context and culture that we currently live in is SO ignorant about these kinds of issues.

On top of that teachers are so defensive which often good reason.

It makes for not the best situation for our kids.

A good way of taking data, is to ask the same maths problem (not the same numbers) every time you sit down and video her answering it.

Then turn off the video and get on with 'teaching' or more importantly with 'learning'.

Then the next time you sit down, ask her the same question and video it.

Once she has managed to answer the problem correctly for x number of consecutive times write it down as acquired and do a different problem.

After a while, video the original problem and see if she can still remember how to do it.

If she can, set up other situations outside of the teaching setting that present the same problem and video that.

You can transcribe the results if it helps having them on a sheet, or just mark whether she achieved it independently, with partial prompting or with full prompting.

You don't have to video who sessions or teaching or take data on everything.

Although sometimes it is good to video a whole session and watch it back to analyse your OWN performance for improvements.

I agree that the school is good. They also prioritise what matters, which is her wellbeing. They're prepared to take her out of lessons 2 or 3 times per week in a SATs year, so that demonstrates that they're about the children rather than the results.

However, I do think they've, so far, decided that she's 'not too bright' (but of course not enough behind to warrant special support) and accepted her lack of progress as evidence of that (well I assume there is a lack of progress. In literacy she was given a 1A at the end of year 1 and when I mentioned it the class teacher almost snorted and said 'she's not performing at a 1A at the moment'. In maths she's told me she's in circles group which is the lowest and she gets a lot wrong (I've seen the maths books) when she was a 1B at the end of Year 1), rather than my assertion which would be along the lines of 'she's not learning because she hasn't been taught in a way she can understand.'

Oh I see, Star. That's interesting. I didn't know any of that about the data collection.

Well you can take data any way you want, but I think it is considered more efficient now to just take data the first time you ask for a different skill to be performed for THAT session.

So you show progress over days/weeks rather than minutes. Depending what it is of course

Yes. I like that.

I think I also need to work out whether she's not getting stuff or if it's just anxiety and she's shutting down.

When I asked for an estimate the other day for her homework, she said '28.' When I said 'that's quite a big number, DD2, and my hand is quite small. I'm not sure I could hold that many. Do you want to have another go?' She said '29.'

I couldn't decide whether she'd just plucked a number out of the air to finish the task, or whether she hadn't realised that 29 was more than 28...