I have a son with major dysgraphia who was just started 9th grade. Tom is gifted in many areas, particularly math, but has a very hard time with “output” unless he can use his AlphaSmart or computer. We have come up with some successful accomodations for him in other subjects, but math has become a problem. In the lower grades, and even in junior high, his teachers were cool about letting him do most of the work in his head, only writing down what he absolutely has to, and sometimes only writing down the answer (not sure how he manages to do algebra that way, but he can). This year’s high school algebra teacher is very concerned about this as Tom proceeds through the higher maths. Soon they will start on complex problems that need to have all their steps written down (particularly geometry) and he is concerned that Tom will not be able to keep up as “showing all work” is time-consuming and laborious for him. Not showing all work is not really feasible, as most kids pass most of their higher math classes thanks to partial credit for partially correct work. Tom’s algebra teacher also wants Tom to re-write the problems to teach him how to analyze the problem. We have come up with a compromise in which Tom can photocopy the problem page out of his book and then highlight the most important information in the problem, but we are still stuck on “showing all work.” Right now it can take him two hours to complete a simple algebra assignment, not because he can’t figure out the answers, but because it is so hard for him to write anything down. Also he procrastinates because he hates the writing.
Anyone have any ideas about how to handle this? This is going to be an an ongoing problem since Tom wants to be an electrical engineer.
There is assistive technology fo rmath...
I went to www.qiat.org (quality indicators for assistive technology) and checked the archives for Math… I’m not finding the name of the program for writing with math that I *know* was mentioned :(
http://education.ti.com/product/software/tii/features/features.html
http://www.intellitools.com/demo/
The archives are at
http://lsv.uky.edu/archives/QIAT.html — maybe you’ll have more success… or you could join the list and ask ‘em :)
Re: Dysgraphia & higher math
My son is also in 9th grade and taking Algebra. His difficulty has been that his teacher makes them not only show their work but for certian problems she has them explain in written words how they got the answer. With his word retrieval and spelling difficulties this is a hard task for him. He has been marked wrong on problems he got right because his words did not match his answer or how he worked it out. Is this a requirement for all upper level math? I don’t remember ever having to explain how I did anything when I took math.
Re: Dysgraphia & higher math
IT’s one of the latest things… and actually, it isn’t a bad idea. It really helps connect the concepts to the symbols. *HOWEVER* for LD kids it really takes more time and effort and should be done 1:1 at least at first… one option would be, for him to give it his best and then have her (or somebody) talk through any he missed with him to figure out what he does understand that he’s not getting out right; another would be to let him dictate that stuff. HOwever, the whole verbal-math connection thing is probably more than just a handwriting issue here. Is it something you can practice with him?
Re: Dysgraphia & higher math
I am not sure how to answer this. He actually writes very nicely. The difficulty is in putting down what is in his head on the paper. His areas of difficulty when it comes to writing are, keeping pace with the teacher when taking lecture notes, tranlating into writing what is being said to him, copying from anything (ie board or text). His penmanship is outstanding, his grammer skills are outstaning, his sentence structure and paper structure are all outstanding. In other words he knows the grammer rules and can apply them. He has an excellent imagination and can visualize really well. He knows and understands the math concepts but sometimes is tripped up by the basics. Word problems have always been very difficult but this area is improving. Any suggestions for programs to work on the language of math?
To give an example
To give an example of how his language difficulties effects the math grade: they had a test where they were required to write an explanation of how they got the answer-he scored a 65 on this test; they had another test this last Friday that did not involve writing explanations he scored a 91 (he just called to let me know he was only 1 of 3 students to score this well!). This shows me he has the concepts and can apply them but has difficulty telling you in written language he knows it. His teacher has verbally tested him and he is able to explain much better. We agree he needs to be able to write it out also, looking for a program to help in this area. Thanks for your input.
Re: Found it -- MathType
Thanks for all the suggestions! I will look into MathType, but I have used Equation Editor and it is more laborious than writing it out, even for someone with dysgraphia.
On Tom’s last quiz, he scored 104 out of 100 points (he didn the extra credit problem) as was able to write out enough of his steps to satisfy the teacher, so a little extra time may be all he really needs.
Math modification
My son is 13 years old and has LD/ADHD. I am looking for a website that lists modifications that can be done for math. Any suggestion is appreciated.
Ghadah
Accommodate Tom with more time to complete math assignments. Less problems assigned on homework is another idea that could be worked in.
He’s going to need to start writing it down. The trick is to try not to make it too laborious.