Thought I should post an update and a possible road forward on the math front...

At our IEP meeting the other day the literacy specialist provided some data - complete with graphs and charts - that did more to explain how 2E presents in the real world than I ever could have hoped for. DD9 (third grade) scored exactly 50th percentile on the regular testing the school does for everyone going into their annual reviews. (She is in out of district placement at a Spec Ed school so everyone has an IEP and therefore an annual review...) The literacy specialist went the extra mile and did 2 additional tests - one showed her 8th grade level reading comprehension and one showed her 20th percentile decoding abilities. Classic 2E masking! Clear as day for anyone in the room who didn't before comprehend the gifts and disabilities combining to show a perfectly average 50th percentile kid.

Ok so when we moved on to math a similar pattern emerged. How could she score SO much higher on geometry than basic, simple math facts? Makes no sense right? This gave me the chance to do my song and dance about high level comprehension and her ability to understand higher level concepts even while not being able to do the most basic first grade level math stuff. Everyone seemed to get it. Then I went the next step and asked if everyone was in agreement that our goal was to get DD to the point where she could function in the real world? Does everyone agree that needs to be our focus? That we can throw out any preconceived notions about typical math curriculums and protocols and the usual path? Everyone nodded in agreement. (Score one big time for mom smile )

I mentioned that I had seen a Japanese method of doing multiplication that involved criss crossed lines where you add the intersecting points. Could something like that work? The teacher knew what I meant and added that she had a special "finger trick" for multiplying by 9. Was it ok to share that with DD? Well heck yeah it was ok. We talked about using songs for learning basic math facts. All sorts of out of the box, unconventional tricks and shortcuts that could be life changing for DD.

The teacher sent me a link to the following Youtube video showing the crisscrossed lines thing and there are some links there to other finger shortcuts for doing math problems. Thought I would share in case they could be helpful to someone else.



Does anyone have any other ideas like these? If so I would love to see them!