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    Joined: Apr 2014
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    aeh Offline
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    KeyMath is a good instrument, more in-depth than WJ or WIAT. But the untimed aspect of it means that fluency is not addressed. One of the interventions with the best track record for dyscalculia is Touch Math, which is a dot system. I'm surprised none of your special ed team know of it. (It's status is much like the OG of basic math and numeracy.)

    If she really cannot attain automaticity after multiple evidence-based interventions have been implemented with fidelity, then she should have a calculator accommodation. I have a student who scored well on the KeyMath, but for whom I recommended calculator, due to the absurd amounts of effort she was putting into drawing massive dot arrays to do long division and multiplication.


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    Pemberley, how frustrating! Feeling helpless to provide the support/ remediation your child needs is just the most awful place. You've achieved so much already though, so I know you will find your way around this seeming dead-end, too. Your daughter is a truly amazing child, and I have no doubt she will ultimately find some extraordinarily creative way to do these tasks.

    It sounds like aeh has pointed to a useful resource. I'll add the math part of the Yale dyslexia site, just in case you haven't seen it: http://dyslexia.yale.edu/math.html The videos at the bottom of the page provide some interesting examples of approaches you could take if you haven't already tried them (though I can't speak to effectiveness). This may be the same/ similar to the TouchMath aeh is suggesting?

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    Thanks everyone. I'm one of those people who easily picked up patterns and shortcuts so I am not the right person to help her with this. It's nice to hear that there are fully functioning adults - very intelligent adults - who can operate in the real world without basic math skills. I will keep some of your success stories in my hip pocket to bring out when she needs some encouragement.

    TouchMath was recommended by the neuropsych who diagnosed her almost 3 years ago. It wasn't really effective. She has every conceivable accommodation - uses calculators, "cheat sheets", number banks, etc. I thought songs and finger tricks would help and they were included in last year's IEP but I don't see any kind of improvement. None. I loaded every possible fun math program onto her iPad and she still plays some. Mostly 1st grade level ones. Again, I don't see any automaticity or fluidity - she counts on her fingers for every answer within every game.

    The article Spaghetti linked is great - I hadn't seen that before. She has severe dyslexia and dysgraphia as well as major visual perception issues - really just about every possible LD and all in their most severe forms. Because she is so smart many adults did not recognize that she was disabled and treated her terribly. This led to school anxiety and the math portion was compounded by a second grade teacher who just wouldn't or couldn't understand the situation or implement the IEP. When her para was out the teacher acted as if DD's disabilities just disappeared culminating in a day when she was told - along with the rest of the class - no one is allowed to count on their fingers anymore. You have to know the answers "just like that" (snapping fingers). DD was given the same set of non-differentiated math flash cards the other kids had already mastered, sent to "practice" with a friend and had the whole stack sent home as extra homework. All a violation of her IEP and the trigger for major issues. She just stood staring at the stack of math problems shaking uncontrollably. I think it was a full fledged panic attack... After that my little rule follower just couldn't accept that it was really ok for her to count on her fingers and math became a demon on her back. Fortunately 2 years at the spec Ed school has allowed her to fully accept her challenges and understand that she "learns differently and that's ok..." Recent eval indicates that anxiety diagnosis no longer applies. Now if someone were to make a remark about her "cheating" by using her fingers or a calculator I think she would look them square in the eye and explain that she has learning disabilities so has to do things differently. "This is the way I need to learn" whereas before she would have retreated, been filled with self loathing and we would have had to spend weeks or months trying to convince her to try again with the accommodations.

    So from what you all are telling me it sounds like Key Math is the right instrument to evaluate her even though it doesn't clarify the problems. They read off all her subtest scores and nothing was out of the "average" range. Nothing sticking out as lower than the others but geometry being much higher than the others. And yes, logic is a strong suit for her. (She had a grade level equivalency of >17.7 on the Analysis-Synthesis part of Fluid Reasoning.)

    2E specialist suggested doing an outside consultation with a math specialist. No one with our district or the school (or my consultant for that matter) had ever heard of such a person. Have any of you heard of a special Ed math "specialist"?

    Ok so I will go into the meeting and

    - accept having them readminister the Key Math eval

    - have them go back to pre-K level math and try to plug any holes

    - let them select the math curriculum unless there is a recommendation here

    - does it pay to try again with TouchMath?

    - accept that like spelling and handwriting it may be time to throw in the towel on remediation

    - I'm thinking I want to try one more time, though, with going back to the beginning and using Cuisinnaire Rods and manipulatives just in case it works

    - focus on reasonable real world solutions and work arounds

    - hope that if VT helps it may open this pathway too...

    DD has recently developed an interest in Helen Keller. I guess that's not too surprising and think it may help her make sense of all the challenges she faces.

    For me I have been trying to remind myself that we have gotten the anxiety and migraines under control, have gotten her to the point of decoding on grade level (although it's at least 6 grades below her comprehension level), have her OOD in a spec Ed placement with an individualized curriculum (including HS level literature), are working on the CAPD and VT. It would be SO much easier to understand, research and rehabilitate any one of these things solo. But combined? Wow - such a wild ride.

    Thanks so much for all you input. I really appreciate it.

    ETA: MichelleC we cross posted. Thank you! Awesome site. I just shared the link with folks at school and district.

    Last edited by Pemberley; 05/28/15 06:23 AM.
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    Wow, Pemberley! I can't help but pick up on two truly amazing accomplishments in your post. Your DD's anxiety levels are way down, and her confidence is way up. "So sorry, this is the way I learn" is just plain awesome! Both these point to astounding growth and improvement, and how incredibly much you and your daughter have achieved. Truly, once you remove the anxiety barrier and add that kind of confidence, I think you've done the most difficult part. Everything else is doable, it's just finding the right path, while knowing you're totally ready to take it, once you do. You guys provide great inspiration.

    Last edited by MichelleC; 05/28/15 06:35 AM.
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    You guys have made so much progress in the last few years. It's really amazing, and the fact that it seems like the IEP meeting time is now focused on math is a signal of just how many issues you've made progress on.

    When was KeyMath given to her? Instead of letting them read off the scores, I would get them written down with percentiles, and examine them, alongside the description & grade level of skills she's missing (the software generates this automatically). I'd also want to know how long she took. Ask to see the test booklet. I'm not sure what a retest would reveal if the test was recent. However, if there are significant differences from the WJ fluency scores (it sounds like there are), then the lack of automaticity might be the core difficulty in progressing mathematically.

    What's the problem with counting on fingers? Seriously. It's a manipulative that we always carry with us. They don't get lost, and you don't have to ask the teacher to get them down off the high shelf for you. When she's done counting on her fingers, does she then have to count the fingers, or does she look at her hands to know the answer? If she does all this reliably, it would indicate to me that she does have a sense of the meaning of mathematical operations, and she's got automaticity of item-to-number correspondence. This would indicate that manipulatives would indeed be useful in helping her progress mathematically (if not arithmetically).

    Does *she* have a problem with using her fingers as a result of past negative experiences?

    The main difficulty with counting on fingers is it's slow.

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    Spaghetti old mon, glad to have you back.

    Pemb, I think your approach is just right. I admire enormously your DD's strength and persistence. And yours.

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    Geo - I sent an email requesting the numbers.

    Spaghetti - she was in a *terrible* migraine cluster last year so we changed her daily med and doubled the usual dose. It got her migraines under control but also came with terrible cognitive side effects. (Testing this winter had all her numbers down a full standard deviation from previous testing.) Now that the migraines are under control and the cognitive impact has been documented we are backing off the meds. Neurologist said that once you break that cluster you can often get away with a much lower dose. Dose was cut by 50% and we will try to go even lower over the summer to see if we can maintain control without the cognitive impact. She wears a hat to protect from fluorescent lighting, avoids loud or chaotic environments which can be a trigger and has found that munching gummy bears or drinking Gatorade can help if she feels one coming on. She almost never asks for meds anymore.

    I think the anxiety control came from getting her out of the bad school environment (remember we were at the public with the awful principal who created a bullying environment), the spec Ed school getting her to understand that her LD's make her "different" not "wrong", having her work with a *great* psych who is both a 2E adult and the parent of a 2E kid, focusing *a lot* on strengths outside of school (she's a musical theater kid and she is doing *a ton* of it), developing a no homework policy so she gives 100% every minute of every day at school as long as she knows she leaves it behind and can relax and enjoy being a kid when the school day is over.

    Basically she has become more comfortable in her own skin and understands that if someone else doesn't get it that is their problem - not something wrong with her. She is less free spirited and extroverted than when she was younger, more contemplative and observing. I don't know how much is just growing up and how much comes from dealing with a boat load of challenges. We worked with her high level comprehension to get her to understand but frankly I don't think we would have been able to get there in her old school environment. It was just too toxic for her.

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    I know people who love TouchMath but it's not effective for some children and I personally found it confusing. I am one of those people who still have to think twice about 8 x 7.

    I once had a student with severe math LD who took a year to gain automaticity on 1 + 1 = 2. It was a cognitive breakthrough when it happened. It might take time but I would not give up on remediation at this point and it doesn't have to be torturous for your DD if you find the right teacher/therapist.

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    Ditto geo.

    Not only does the scoring software allow easy printouts of all the skill gaps, it includes arrows to the sold-separately intervention guide, which a sped school might actually own. Not something the WJ can do.

    If they were questioning a math disability, then I would press for fluency testing to document. If they accept the disability, then it depends on whether you want that data for progress monitoring purposes. I'd prefer the WIAT for that, though, as the WJ has mixed operations, where the WIAT splits out +, -, and x.

    Most kids take about an hour to complete the KM. Ask how long it took, and how much she needed to use scratch paper (when allowed). Also, older kids (third grade and up) can use the calculator on the same problem-solving subtest. (Sorry, can't remember her age.) If allowed, did she use it/was she offered it/them?


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    I got the Key Math scores and they are just as reported in the IEP meeting. It was done a year ago, end of 3rd grade when DD was 9.4. Graph shows a whole bunch of black dots in the "Average" column with 2, Geometry and Foundations of Problem Solving, just barely into Above Average. Grade equivalents ranged from 2.9 in Mental Computation and Estimation to 6.5 in Geometry. So all exactly as they presented in the meeting and nothing to point to the severe math disability...

    SUBTEST. RAW SCORE SCALE SCORE. GRADE AGE
    Numeration 17. 8. 3.1 8:5
    Algebra. 13. 8. 3.3. 8:8
    Geometry 24. 13. 6.5. 11:7
    Measurement. 18. 10. 3.9. 9.5
    Data Analysis and Probability 15. 8. 3.4. 8.8

    Basic Concepts. (Standard Score 99 Percentile 47). 3.9 9.3

    Mental Computation
    And Estimation. 12. 8. 2.9. 8:4
    Addition and Subtraction. 19 10. 4.0. 9.5
    Multiplication and Division. 5. 8. 3.4. 8:10

    Operations. (Standard Score 92 Percentile 30). 3.4. 8:10

    Foundations of Problem
    Solving. 18. 13. 5.8. 10:11
    Applied Problem Solving. 13. 8. 3.0. 8:5

    Applications. (Standard Score 103 Percentile 58). 4.2. 9.8

    Total Test Composite (Standard Score 97 Percentile 42). 3.8. 9.2




    No info on timing but was listed as "Good" for confidence, attention and conscientiousness. Effort was "Excellent."

    No one seems to question the existence of math disability.

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