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    Joined: Apr 2011
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    I've been been partial homeschooling my DD (7yrs) for about 6 weeks now. We work primarily on math and literacy for 2 hrs a day together. We started the homeschooling because I felt she wasn't working at an appropriate level in literacy, nor at an appropriate speed and in the appropriate manner for math (ie the level was not necessarily wrong, so much as approach and pace).

    A few weeks in I was commenting to DH, and probably here, that her conceptual ability was well ahead of her basic arithmetic/facts. However, watching her work and also being reminded by a recent post of HKs about WHY I wanted to home-school math in the first place, has me wondering if she's not so much struggling to learn math facts as completely confused about basic principles. One of the concerns I was trying to explain to her school was I felt like coming at a vast array of concrete representations of the same idea again and again and again was confusing her (ie "Didn't we just do this? So this must be new... So there must be some trick here... Ummm...."). They want the kids to "discover for themselves" "authentically" the meaning of every possible concrete representation of an idea, like it's new and amazing...

    She's struggling incredibly with basic addition and subtraction and watching her I can't quite tell if she's

    a) using multiple methods in a conflicting manner

    b) suffering from a working memory or processing deficit (ie the method is fine but she keeps losing her place and miscounting). She does have ADHD, this is feasible BUT she is on medication, which does work, and her WMI on the SB5 was 140+ BEFORE medication....

    Can anyone suggest the right approach to figuring out if this is a method problem or a maturity of mental math ability problem? I am assuming I would address fixing these causes differently.

    While we are speaking of her IQ testing - quantitative reasoning was her weakest area on the SB5 (96th), the tester noted it was too early to tell if she had an actual relative weakness or simply hadn't developed the skills yet through lack of interest (she was 5.25yrs). She's not crazy out there in math by any stretch (holding her own whole grade skipped, but no more than that in math), but she should surely be well able to manage subtraction and addition within 20, or at least within 10.

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    Thanks Portia, she's definitely completely sound on quantity (if you mean correspondence) but like your son something seems to be going horribly wrong with a partially on the fingers and partially in the head approach to addition and subtraction. I see her waggling her fingers or touching her knuckles and re-doing and re-ding it because she's gotten muddled. I am not sure if it's a problem with her ability to think or a problem with using a completely erroneous method (or weird amalgam of approaches that were never supposed to be smerged).

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    She's got a pretty good attitude and has not given up because the work is too easy - she's been at vaguely the right level for the last 18 months at least, but becoming increasingly confused in some ways. I am pretty sure her mental math was the same (or better) at 4.5yrs old when compared to right now.

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    She's struggling incredibly with basic addition and subtraction and watching her I can't quite tell if she's

    a) using multiple methods in a conflicting manner

    b) suffering from a working memory or processing deficit (ie the method is fine but she keeps losing her place and miscounting). She does have ADHD, this is feasible BUT she is on medication, which does work, and her WMI on the SB5 was 140+ BEFORE medication....

    Can anyone suggest the right approach to figuring out if this is a method problem or a maturity of mental math ability problem? I am assuming I would address fixing these causes differently.

    Struggling how, exactly?

    And in what SORTS of representations?

    Standard over-under notation? Side-by-side, equation-style?

    Manipulatives or a drawn representation of them?

    First thing that I would try is to have her "teach" a stuffed animal or pet-- or you, if she will-- how to do the problems she is working on. Let her do a few of those, maybe even pipe up with questions if a 'gap' isn't being explained-- that will let you know whether or not she's "smushing" methods somehow and adding 2+2=5 as a result. wink


    Then you'll know what you need to remediate, if there's a problem in something she's learned (or erroneously applied/synthesized).



    Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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    Perfect suggestion, thank you!

    Her understanding of what the question is asking seems correct in side by side OR over under, as is her approach to multiple forms of writing out subtractiong with re-grouping. But when she solves the smaller parts of the question (11-7, 8-5, etc) in her head she takes an obscenely long time and is wrong at least half the time. Zero problems doing it with beads, though we've not done it a lot. she seems annoyed by the beads and to want to do it in her head but then to go horribly wrong.

    Edited to add that she clearly understands what is happening in a drawn representative of 83-29, but will still choose to work out the ones in her head and get them wrong.

    Last edited by MumOfThree; 09/15/13 08:34 PM.
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    Well, have you asked her HOW she's doing the problem in her head?

    Like-- is she visualizing beads? Is the problem that she can't "hold" the image? Maybe it would help to arrange things in rather fixed "patterns" so that she can recognize "shapes/patterns" (like the number of symbols on playing cards, for example-- you don't have to "count" an 8 to know how many hearts are there, right?) and speed things up that way.

    I tend to work basic math quite visually, myself. I'm terrible at rote memorization, so fluency was a VERY slow go for me personally.

    Is this difficulty in the context of two-digit subtraction? Is she also having trouble with addition, or ONLY with subtraction?

    I tended toward the latter-- for some reason, that is more complex to do mentally if you're working problems visually. I think it requires an extra "holding/manipulation" step over addition.



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    I was just talking with DH about this, she's a very private little person (partly this is extreme perfectionism, can't bear to find out she's wrong), so she's mubbling and waggling her fingers enough that I can tell she's doing SOMETHING but not what exactly. I will try the "teach teddy" approach tomorrow and see what that reveals.

    I think it is worse with subtraction (need to pay more attention), so I have been teaching her to add up to the number she needs to subtract from (ie calculate 13-7 like this: 7 + 3 [to get to ten] + 3 [to get to thirteen] = 7+6 SO 13-7=6). She has no problem following this concept at all, perhaps she will start applying it herself.

    She's equally strong verbally/visually on IQ test, but it is entirely possible that she does think about this sort of thing visually, which I don't AT ALL. Edited to add: There is no way I could visualise numbers based on a deck of cards for example.

    Last edited by MumOfThree; 09/15/13 09:06 PM.
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    But when she solves the smaller parts of the question (11-7, 8-5, etc) in her head she takes an obscenely long time and is wrong at least half the time.

    Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but maybe she needs to do some rote facts work? Or is the concern that somehow the basics aren't there--like, there is an inability to conceptualize 8-5?

    I feel like with some kids, they just need to get the facts cemented before moving on or they will get hung up? No? Feel free to shoot me down.

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    Ultramarina - I am just trying to figure out if its nothing more than needing some rote learning, or if there is some other issue.

    Today we did a bunch of exercises around counting 1s/10s with manipulatives and manipulating ideas about those numbers verbally, and it was interesting the odd gaps she has. No trouble conceiving that 12 blocks could represent 12 ones OR 12 tens, could count the 12 "tens" and say "12 tens" could count them by 10s and say "120", could write "12 10s = 120", but verbally struggled with converting back and forth between 12 10s and 120. It seems much easier for her to count the objects by hand but to think about the concepts seperately from the manipulatives (or maybe just on paper) does that make any sense at all? It seems when looking at the numbers it's easy to understand that 12 groups of 10 equals 120, by when saying it outloud she gets confused about where to put the zero? Maybe this is a visual thinker issue?

    I think the adding/subtracting/counting difficulties may be age and/or ADHD related. She was having trouble accurately counting larger groups of beads today as she'd loose her place or miss one. Like wise when asked to add or subtract without beads she wants to use her fingers but the gets muddled.

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    Maybe she just hasn't found the method that works for her yet?

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