Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Differentiation without ability to read

DS4’ math ability is probably around 1st grade level.

He is learning how to count in preschool, but even DD2 knows how to count to 40.

When I do math enrichment at home with him, I have to give him directions since he cannot read.

Is there any creative ways to do differentiation at school without the ability to read?

Any advice is appreciated!

If he could go on the computer ... I'd say Dreambox learning or another program like that

absolutely

A good teacher should be able to adapt math to his level and espec. a K teacher- since many kiddos in K can not read.

Lots and lots of visuals. If he is doing most of it mentally-- then showing visual steps to his thoughts to build a good foundation. If he is doing mostly digit work then add some visualization.

Good 'math' topics that lend themselves to visual work (and no reading) is fractions (tactile shapes), weight sorting with a balance scale, dominos, using a ruler, patterning (ABCD or AAABBCAAA____- challenging patterns!), simple verbal story problems, teach symbols and signs (_, + ,=, etc), visual math with cubes to show different ways to do something ( 3 ways to show 6 or 2 ways to show 2+5, etc)

I will say that in 1st- our math curriculum had a lot of reading! It also had math machines....prealgebra stuff. _____ + 5 = 10 and so on.

Is he in K?

Oh, sorry. It looks like he is in preschool. In preschool, I guess I'd be hoping they aren't doing worksheets anyway. My suggestion might to provide some manipulatives or math materials, if anything? Or the computer isn't a bad idea if they are giving the kids computer time.

If they're counting out loud, maybe he could do skip counting?

We brought in 1st 2nd grade math books for DS when he was 4. The teacher let him do those. If your DS can't read that wouldn't be a problem.

At home play his favorite board game with dice. Many dice. When DS 5.10 was just turned 3 we started this. Beginning with 2 dice and by the time he was 4 he would add up 10 dice with ease using a combination of addition and multiplication.

At that age, DS7 gave himself his own math instruction by playing with calculators. Play being the key here.

I can't point to the direction of causality, but DS does operations very quickly and has a great number sense and has been playing with algebra lately. The more I think about it, it is hard to imagine a better tool for authentic, self-directed math learning than a calculator.

Hellobaby, DD4 is similar, advanced in math but doesn't read yet. However, she can read math fairly easily as she knows all the operators and symbols and can "sight" read words pertaining to math such as names of geometric shapes, size comparison, greater than, less than, more/less likely, etc when given a context, ie a picture. For word problems, like the ones on IXL, I will usually just read out the first two problems so she knows the pattern, then she knows where to find the numbers and get the answer, without actually reading the question. HTH.