By Rory Edwards
Rory Edwards is a local parent, teacher of 28 years and a school governor. He offers us an insight into certain dilemmas parents might face throughout the school year.
Over my years of teaching Maths, I have (unsurprisingly) privately tutored students in Maths. This leads to many conversations with parents about many different aspects of school life but the question I’m asked most is “Do you know any English teachers that can tutor? I think my child has dyslexia.” Parents (some, not all I stress) tend to attribute not doing so well in English down to dyslexia but there are very few who think that the reason a child in struggling in Maths may be due to dyscalculia – the Maths version of dyslexia.
Maths teachers are luckier than English teach-ers in this respect. There will almost certainly be someone with dyslexia in a school but in comparison, there may be no students who have been diagnosed with dyscalculia. I once noticed symptoms in a student when I did what I thought was a nice and simple activity called “How Much Change?” It’s very easy to do and you could play this at home. I say words to the effect of “I go into a shop, spend £2.76, how much change do I get from a £5/£10/£20 note?” I’d just joined a new school and one girl wasn’t able to answer the ques-tions, even when I changed them to how much change from £1 if I spend 80p?” This girl was the only student I have ever taught who has been diagnosed with dyscalculia. I asked the girl what she did when she actually went into a shop, she replied that she never checked the change, she just put the money in her pocket. It was sad to hear this but the student changed the way I planned lessons and how I teach lower ability students. Here are some of the signs of dyscalculia:
Trouble counting. Put dots on a piece of paper and ask your child to count them
Trouble understanding the size of numbers, i.e. not realising that 6 is bigger than 5
Trouble understanding what most would call basic Maths, i.e. adding and subtracting single digit numbers
Cannot remember phone numbers (a lost art these days!) or find a house number when walking down a street
Has difficulty using Maths in everyday situa-tions like the student I mentioned above.
If you think your child may suffer from dy-scalculia, speak to the school’s SENCO. If they agree with you, they will be able to or-ganise a test to confirm whether your child has dyscalculia or not. These are some of the things I did in lessons and are quite easily done at home as well:
Have objects ready when practising counting. At school we have beads, dice, counters and even text books at the side of the room but you can use what is available in your house, pasta shells for example.
I had about 10 laminated times tables grids in my classroom, ready for whichever stu-dents needed them. Print a grid off the internet and put it on the fridge.
Board games are really useful for counting. I’ve had Snakes and Ladders, Ludo and even Connect 4 in my classroom. I really wanted to play Monopoly but it would take way too long!
For more information about dyscalculia, a quick search takes you to the following web-sites: Dycalculianetwork.com, Understood.org and Childmind.org
Very soon, parents will find out which sec-ondary schools their children will go to. Next month, I’ll be writing about what to do if you don’t get the school you hoped to get.