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My DD who is 6 has a great perceptual reasoning score (147), yet has difficulty in math. She especially has a hard time memorizing math facts. I thought perceptual reasoning was related to math ability? Is her working memory (significantly lower at 107) possibly causing her difficulties? Should we have an evaluation of some sort done? Her math work is going to increase quite a bit when she starts 2nd grade next month and I'm worried.
Have you seen any other indications of possible LDs? For example, my DD has a similar PR score but she is dyslexic. Her conceptual math skills are very high and she is a couple years advanced in math. At the same time, she has a hard time with rote memorization tasks and timed tests so she is not great at math facts.
Memorizing math facts doesn't really have anything to do with math abilities.. just with memorization skills. My DS8 has a difficult time with short term memory, but has amazing long term memory recall... so, it's hard to get him to memorize things like math facts initially, but once he does memorize something, it's in there forever.
Math also require a lot of reading and writing skills, as well as organization... I'd look at the other areas to see which ones your kiddo needs some help with.
I don't have much knowledge about scoring tests, but I do know that my son who is 6-years-old scored in the 99.9th on his test, and he HATES memorizing things! Hates it! (He also hated memorizing spelling words last year in school.) He can multiply and divide by skip-counting, but he has yet to memorize his multiplication tables. He's learning them by singing songs now. Hopefully it will help him with the dreaded kill and drill!
Your DD is only 6, so she is still really young. You have lots of time work on math facts. Although I think it is boring, buying a few Kumon books and drilling through those are really good for math facts. And just buy or make some flashcards and flip through them daily, 5 minutes a day. We did that for my older one, who has a processing disorder. We did flashcards (addition, subtraction, multiplication) 5 minutes a day for 6-12 months. I had him do a few speed math tests- he got 49/50 for addition and subtraction and 45/50 for multiplication in two minutes. Not too bad! 1 1/2 years ago, he only got 14 in 2 minutes. So just chip away at it.
If your daughter has a hard time memorizing math facts, don't worry-- as others have said, it doesn't have much to do with her general math ability. That said, math facts are necessary good to learn at some point, to aid in fluency and allow proper focus on higher-level concepts when working problems. In addition, learning the facts may help in advocacy, as it removes a potential objection by the school to advancement. Maybe your daughter just hasn't had a method of learning math facts that clicked with her, or she might just need a little more time and practice.
I know that Timez Attack is used by some parents, whose children find it fun. We used IXL once upon a time, and something about the practice tasks there really clicked, to the point that my son was able to get the whole set of multiplication facts memorized after a few sessions (and normally he hates drill of any sort).
One technique that may work for your daughter is to give her strategies for (re)constructing the facts. Once she learns her twos table, she can construct the fours as long as she can add in her head, etc. I believe that that first link above has some strategies in it. Those might work well because they can increase confidence-- even if your daughter can't remember a fact, if she has a way or two to reconstruct it she won't be at a loss, just will take a bit more time to come up with the answer. In addition, if the reconstruction takes more time than simply memorizing the answer, over time she will simply start to remember to minimize the work; it will probably be automatic and relatively painless.
Striving to increase my rate of flow, and fight forum gloopiness.
Math also require a lot of reading and writing skills, as well as organization...
This is what stymies my son. His computation abilities are well above grade level, but as soon as he has to read a word problem or show his work, he starts losing marks.
He can multiply and divide by skip-counting, but he has yet to memorize his multiplication tables.
My two kids were the same. I think memorization is very dry and doesn't have the same appeal as calculating
At DS8's 3rd grade parent/teacher conferences, the teacher commented that "obviously he has his math facts down". I explained to the teacher that I don't think he does, but he can add in his head very quickly. Whatever works at this point is fine by me.
