Some of the things you've noted could be related to *not* having accommodations in place yet for her DOWD/Dyspraxia. A lot of what you write sounds very similar to my dysgraphic/dyspraxic ds who also had a diagnosis of DOWD during elementary school.
my daughter has trouble repeatedly writing spelling words out as spelling practice exercise and modified the exercise for her, which is great because she actually can't write and focus on spelling at the same time.[/qupte]
This could be due to dyslexia but also sounds a lot like possible dysgraphia.
All the other stuff is just very frustrating busy work that reinforces bad handwriting habits.
I'm not sure what "other stuff" actually refers to, but what might look like bad handwriting habits might not actually be "habits" but rather the impact of her dyspraxia.
[quote]But now she's coming home telling that math is really, really hard. How can second grade math be hard?
It can be hard for all sorts of reasons - it's possible the concepts are tough for her, or it could be hard for a dyspraxic student because it's handwriting intensive.
1) They are doing addition of numbers like 23 +2 like this:
Step one: Decompose 23 into 20+3 by creating circles coming down from the 23 and writing the 20 in the first one and 3 in the second.
Step 2: write out 3+2=5
Step 3: write out 20+ 5=25
Step 4: write out 23+5=25
Obviously, she doesn't need to write anything down to know that 23+2=25, and I've heard the complaint that kids get bored writing all of this stuff out, but I don't think that is mine's problem.
Are you sure she knows 23+2=25?
The more I watch her, the more I see how absolutely terrible she is at breaking things down into steps. I think I can drill her on this and that if she just practices these steps, she'll have them down. Is that the right thing to do here or is there something cognitive that she's missing that she needs to be able to do, that me drilling her in the algorithm will render ineffective? Or is it like the spelling, just a totally ineffective way for her to solve a problem?
It sounds like you're still waiting for a full report from an evaluation or she's had a recent evaluation - if this is something that's not addressed in the report, can you ask the person who did the evaluation if they have any insight that might be relevant? My dysgraphic ds is very very good at math - but he refused to do any math worksheets in early elementary and would stare at them and tell us he didn't know what to do. It wasn't the math concepts that was the challenge, it was the writing. He does have an expressive language disorder in addition to dysgraphia, but I think it's really all tied into his dyspraxia. We weren't able to really see his math abilities or have him appropriately placed in math until we had accommodations in place for handwriting.
It also looks like she's having trouble drawing circles and fitting the numbers inside of them and she doesn't like to write down the equation. When I force her to, she'll write 3 2 5. Then I'll tell her she left out the equation symbols and she'll force them in between the numbers while being very frustrated.
This really sounds like it's dyspraxia-related (fine motor skill challenges) rather than a math challenge.
Is this normal? Are there modifications or ways of teaching this that will make it easier for her to write the steps down?
No, it's not normal for neurotypical kids - but yes, it sounds like "normal" for a dyspraxic student who has fine motor challenges or possibly a student with undiagnosed vision challenges. Have you ever asked your dd if writing/drawing makes her hand or wrist hurt? Does her handwriting seem sloppy and not evenly spaced? Has she had her vision checked?
I hate to have her hate math because of something like this. (FWIW, she is not math gifted, but she is working above grade level and generally scores in the 99th percentile on school math achievement tests.)
If the issue is related to dyspraxia or another type of challenge rather than actually understanding the math, chances are great that once you've accommodated for the challenge she'll like math a-ok (unless that's just not her personality!).
The other problem is even weirder, and it is something that I am starting to be able to trace back as a consistent problem. She is sometimes given a number (like 26) and told to show this number 4 different ways (2 dimes/6 pennies, 20+6, XXVI, etc.) She is really stressed out about this.
Whaaaa?
She told me that there are so many ways to break 26 down that there are just too many choices in her head and she doesn't know which ones to pick and gets stressed out and can't think. I remember when she was in a montessori preK, the one problem she had was in choosing what activity to do. She said there were so many choices that she couldn't decide. And if you ask her a very general question, like "what did you do today?" she says she doesn't really remember. At the school open house, they had to write down one thing they wanted to know about second grade and she couldn't think of anything. She said that she just did first grade for a whole year, why would she have questions? That being said, it's totally a blank page thing. Other than that, she seems to be a REALLY flexible thinker.
I think that you'll hear a lot of people respond that this is typical for a gifted kid - to have so many thoughts inside their head they don't know what to answer. It all also sounds so much like my dyspraxic ds, but he says the issue for him isn't having a ton of things in his head to choose from, it's really not knowing what to write down. It's not just an I'm-confused-about-this-one-question - show-me-how-to-do-it-and-I'll-get-it - it's a glitch in communication ability. It's difficult to grasp that it's an actual challenge in kids who are extremely bright because when they are able to communicate it is so obvious that they are highly flexible thinkers with huge cognitive abilities.
Getting back to the second math issue, I don't know what to tell her except for to just pick one thing out of the air and write it down. It doesn't matter which of the 26 ways she chooses. They are all the same, just choose one. I totally don't understand why this is so hard.
I've been telling this to my dyspraxic ds for similar assignments for years, and he *still* has difficulty choosing. He's almost grown now, and we've had so many opportunities to talk about the "why" and for him, and I can't really explain it well but I'll try. If you put a set of 10 different objects down on a table (real, physical objects) and told him to choose one, he could do it without thinking. Trying to get information out of his head is an entirely different process. He does have to think about it but it's almost like the step of "move your hand to object A on the table and pick it up" is missing when it's something in his brain that needs to be selected and retrieved. Learning challenges are a lot like swiss cheese - holes/gaps in random places (terrible analogy but I can't think of anything else at the moment!)
We're with the perfect teacher and perfect place/time to ask for accommodations. However, I'd personally prefer she learn how to handle and solve her own learning challenges without accommodation, when possible.
The ultimate goal for almost all of our kids (those with LDs or disabilities and those without) is to one day become a happy, independently functioning adult. People with disabilities often need some type of accommodation. Naturally you don't want to put an accommodation in place that your child doesn't need and may come to depend on, but the flip side is that with dyspraxia chances are good your child will need some type of accommodations somewhere. You may find that once you've accommodated for handwriting, for instance, that some of the other things that look like challenges will disappear. So my recommendation is take it one step at a time. Get the report if you're still waiting for one. If not, go back to your evaluator with the questions you've asked here to get their opinion. Then start putting the accommodations in place that are recommended for the 504. With the math, I'd try scribing for her at home and see if that relieves the frustration or if she's still confused. For most 2e kids, there isn't going to be an overnight answer for everything - it's going to be a journey where you figure out one piece of the puzzle then tackle the next. I suspect you'll have a bit of that "peeling of the onion layers" to do to fully understand everything that's going on with your dd.
It's really wonderful you have a teacher who's willing to make modifications and accommodations - that will help tremendously this year!
Best wishes,
polarbear
ps - this is something that is probably not related to what's up with your dd at all... but I'll throw it out there just in case it seems to be familiar at all. One of my dds had really bad vision (not eyesight, but double vision, eyes not tracking etc) when she was in early elementary. She also hated math and would get really really upset and frustrated over trying to learn concepts like you mentioned above. Sometimes she's learn some concepts very quickly, other times she'd just collapse in meltdowns crying about how she just didn't understand math. She'd fallen behind grade level by the time her vision challenges were diagnosed and remediated, and for the next two years or so we (parents and teachers) all continued to see the math issues as separate from her vision issues and dd continued to have meltdowns over new concepts introduced in math. That all changed, however, with time, and she eventually started not only catching on in math but complaining of being bored, and she's now not only caught up to grade level but is subject-accelerated in math. In working with her over the past year though I've realized she still has impacts from the time early on in school when she couldn't see - impacts in the way she needs to visualize a problem etc, as well as needing to hear an explanation rather than read it. She *can* read really well now, but I think her early brain-training relied so much on auditory information due to vision issues that that's how she learns math now and it's not going to change even though she reads well and can see much better. The way she thinks through problems to understand them also many times doesn't mesh with how I would work through it, but it's logical to her and it does work - it's just not in the way that a person who is using eyesight to see and then in turn can easily come up with a visual perhaps thinks things through. Hope that makes sense!
