teaching math--methods

Terri - My 7 year old ADHD/CAPD child also has trouble with math. I have been everywhere looking for resources. I stumbled across a book by Grayson H. Wheatley called “Coming To Know Number”. We are just now starting to use it. I have read the book and am very impressed with his methods, which he developed to help children build a good foundation for math. He believes that mathemathics is reasoning, not memorization. While my child had trouble with math facts, I was able to assist him with “Math Facts the Fun Way”. But even though he was beginning to learn his facts, he appeared confused about general math concepts. I very quickly came to realize that he would one day hit a brick wall if I did not take the time to build a good math foundation. You may want to invest in this book. His email address is [email protected]
Also, for your information, this book was written as a resource guide for elementary school teachers.

Landmark School has a math program that I got & really like for the basics(haven’t found aybody to use it on but I’ve borrowed ideas for my older students)
go to www.landmarkschool.org and click on “outreach and publications.” IT is worth the investment (which isn’t that big; it’s just a book with some cut-out materials at the back)

I strongly recommend getting an abacus, just ten wires with ten beads on each, and working out number problems in reality for a long, long time before trying to do paper abstractions and memorization. This sounds simple but develops real number sense and control. It’s especially important to attach a real meaning to borrowing.

I’ve posted previously about memorization techniques and visualization — try to search out the old posts, and if you cna’t find them, please email.

I agree with Victoria. Children must understand place value and number sense or they will never understand subtraction. Do place value and borrowing or regrouping with lots of different items in lots of different situations until he understands what he is doing. Money is another good way to show regrouping, use pennies and dimes.
Nan

You may have already done this, but we’ve had great success using a set of base 10 blocks to learn borrowing and carrying. I got these at a teacher’s supply store and both my kids have gotten a fair amount of use from them. FYI- my second grade son can do subtraction with borrowing in his head with no trouble, and he can demonstrate the process using the base 10 blocks fairly easily, but he really resists showing the work with pencil and paper. He can do it, but it is clearly outside of his comfort zone. Since I’ve been through this with his older brother, I’m confident that by next year it will be a piece of cake so we just set all that subtraction aside and went on to multiplication. Sometimes waiting is more productive than struggling.

Jean

Hi. Try cusainaire rods (avaiilable from education stores) to get values and number places really straight in his head then you might try one of the cd’s from School Zone interactive like Math 1- 2 or Reader rabbit math for his grade level. Their only advantage is that they set up games with situations where the skills have to be learned. If your son’s like mine he will then go back again and again spending hours playing the games and either then come back to lessons trying to get info in order to win the game or figure it out by trying to do it himself. We have limited all computer games to this sort, but as a motivater and to get out of the screaming, crying, “but you’ve got to do this” scenes it may be worth a try.