To my astonishment he was able to do two digit subtraction with regrouping, with horizontal or vertical layout, in his head. He was actually enjoying doing math, for the first time this school year. Bingo. I truly believe that the problem lies with the fact that is most likely has dysgraphia. He gets confused by his own handwriting and gets frustrated, beats himself up, etc.
I contacted his teacher and asked her to let him work the problems in his head and her reluctant response was that's fine but he still needs to learn how to work them out for tcaps. If he can get the answer in his head, then he already knows how to "work" them, no? He can write them out, that's not the issue, but until I get this dysgraphia stuff figured out...what's the big deal in letting the kid learn the way that is best for him?
We have this same thing with one of my kids. I'm pretty sure he has dysgraphia (testing is pending). He was having a lot of trouble adding and subtracting fractions. I worked with him a bit one night and then walked away. To my astonishment as well, it turned out he could add things like 1 3/5 + 4 6/7 in his head, including simplifying the result, and get the right answer 9 times out of 10.
His teacher is also complaining that he doesn't "show his work." She didn't answer the email I sent asking if he could maybe just write out the work for half his problems.
I completely understand that a child needs to show a stepwise procedure when he clearly doesn't yet grasp the material fully. I also get that it's important to be able to write out the steps, as this process can help down the road when you want to explain something to someone. But as a matter of course in a kid (especially a dysgraphic kid) who fully understands the procedure, it makes no sense to me.
