How to help your child with maths difficulties

(Original article by Jo van Herwegen, Elisabeth Herbert and Laura Outhwaite, published in The Conversation)

A good grasp of maths can be beneficial but many people (said to be up to 22%) struggle to understand maths. According to the authors, around 6% of primary school children may have dyscalculia, which is a recognised mathematical learning disability.

Developmental dyscalculia is a persistent difficulty in understanding numbers which can affect anyone, regardless of age or ability.

Children with dyscalculia struggle to learn foundational mathematical skills and concepts, such as simple counting, adding, subtracting and multiplication as well as remembering times tables. These earlier problems lead to later difficulties with more advanced maths, such as borrowing and carrying over, fractions and ratios. Dyscalculia not only affects children during maths lessons: it can have an impact on all areas of the curriculum.

Struggling with maths has nothing to do with general academic ability or level of intelligence. Children with dyscalculia might, however, have other areas of difficulty as well, such as language problems (dyslexia) or attention challenges (ADHD).

The authors offer some practical tips to support children with mathematical learning difficulties.

Use props

Children with dyscalculia may often need to use practical aids, such as their fingers or an abacus when working out maths problems. They can benefit from using counters and beads to make sets or groups, as well as using number lines to work out answers to maths problems.

Older children may find it helpful to keep crib sheets handy, which make information such as the times tables or certain formulas easily accessible. Inclusive teaching methods like these are likely to benefit all learners, not just those with dyscalculia.

Break the problem down

Research shows that metacognition can have a positive effect on math learning. Metacognition is “thinking about thinking”—for example, thinking about the information you do and don’t know, or self awareness about the strategies you have to work out problems.

Teaching children strategies to identify where to start on a problem and how to break mathematical problems down could be a good starting point. For example, parents and teachers could encourage children to use songs and mnemonics to help them remember strategies to solve particular problems.

For example, the mnemonic DRAW provides learners with a strategy for solving addition, subtraction, multiplication, & division problems:

D: discover the sign—the student finds, circles, and says the name of the operator (+,-, x or /).

R: read the problem—the student reads the equation.

A: answer—the student draws tallies or circles to find the answer, and checks it over.

W: write the answer—the student writes out the answer to the problem.

Find out where help is needed

Children with mathematical learning difficulties often get stuck with maths problems and may quickly give up. Teachers and parents should ask children what they find difficult—even young children can explain this—and provide explicit instruction to support them with what they find difficult.

Focus on one thing at a time

As mathematical problems can be confusing for learners with mathematical difficulties, make sure to only work on one problem at the time. This could mean covering other maths questions on the page, and removing irrelevant pictures. Provide immediate feedback on both correct and incorrect answers. This will help children learn from their practice and understand the difference between correct and incorrect problem-solving strategies.

It may also help to provide plenty of repetition and revisiting, teach short and frequent sessions, and make sure learners know what they should do if they get stuck, such as ask an adult for help.

Use the right vocabulary

Mathematical language and symbols can also be confusing. For example, a negative number carries a minus sign, but a minus sign can also be used to define an operation such as subtraction. We often use the word “minus” for both—for instance, saying “14 minus minus 9” (14—–9). This can be difficult to interpret. Various different words, such as subtract, minus and take away, can describe the same concept.

It is important to use clear language (for instance, “14 take away negative 9”). Helping children expand their math vocabulary, as well as checking their understanding, will also be useful.

Play games

Mathematics is everywhere around us in the environment and what is learned in the classroom also applies to our daily lives. Research has shown that young children benefit from playing short mathematical games using the tools and materials around them.

Counting and collecting sets of items can be done in any place: at the dining table, in the bath, or when out and about. Practice-based educational apps can also help children master foundational math skills.

Be positive

Finally, it is crucial to promote positive feelings towards mathematics. This might include not voicing your own concerns and negative feelings about math. Rather, foster an interest in math that will help children persevere and overcome their difficulties.

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.