Math for abstract concepts?

If not, I highly recommend a little book called “One Hand at a Time”—available on-line at Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Learning to tell time also helps with understanding fractions. I am pasting below an earlier post I wrote on this book. It also has some material on elapsed time. Also if you do a search on this site, I think you’ll find a number of other posts on fractions and time.

Author: Marie
Date: 07-10-02 10:02

Leah, I have copied my old post pitching this great little book. I ordered it on line, but I’m sure you could order it through the
store if you’d rather do that and pick up a latte at the same time. Marie

Author: Mariedc
Date: 02-07-02 16:47

I can attest the one hand method really works. I’ve been meaning to write a post on this mainly to thank Robin G. who
recommended it in a post here a number of months ago. There is a book called One Hand at a Time (available through
Amazon or Barnes & Noble) that gives you a lot of sequential, hands-on, activities to do to teach telling time…one hand at a
time, starting with the hour hand. It is aimed at elementary school teachers, but works just as well at home.

My 11 year old could not tell time on an analog clock at all (unless the hour was directly on the o’clock). Due to
overwhelming homework, I waited until winter break to get him going on the One Hand activities. I spent at least an hour and
a half a day (broken into two sessions) for seven days going through the activities. He now tells time perfectly!!…Not fast, he
hesitates a bit, but perfectly. He can even tell me how many minutes it is before the hour. (The book has activities on the
before/after stuff.)

I did not do every activity in the book (some were too childish) and cheated on the clock making…I used a teaching clock
after unscrewing one hand, and for some of the activities I used up to three teaching clocks.

I can’t thank Robin enough for suggesting this book. By learning to tell time, his sense of time has improved greatly and he
understands a lot more the necessity of getting home work started and done early. It has been a tremendous help. This book
has demonstrated to me how important the way something is taught is to having the child learn it. If only his school had used
the methods in this book in second or third grade….

Landmark school has a program used at their school for LD kids (http://www.landmarkschool.org - go to “outreach and publications”) that works on building concepts; there are some good UK publications on teaching mathematics to dyslexics that have very good strategies and ideas (Whurr publications, Chinn & Ashcroft’s book; can’t remember the whole title but it’s a teaching handbook); for multliplication there is practice broken down into little pieces on my site (www.resourceroom.net) as well as a book or two about it.

It’s great that you recognize the abstract concept issue; too many kiddos get a lot further before it’s addressed.

He can tell time from looking at the clock. It’s the elapsed time or future time that is the problem.

Bun

Thanks for the leads. LOL, we are musicians, we live for the abstract…. The teacher is pretty good at figuring out what’s wrong, but she doesn’t always let me know in a timely manner. I find out by the time he’s been doing things a while. Then I can’t sit and work extra with him because he’s too frustrated and doesn’t want any parts of it.

I would love for him to be able to go to Landmark, they are just so expensive. We’d move up there if he could go. He’s one of those children Thomas Sowell describes in his books - parents are musicians, engineers, accountants….the child was doomed!!!

Thanks again -
Bun

Go back to concrete (fractional pieces) and stay there until he’s ready to use symbols (numbers). Be sure that the concept is firmly in place.

In the meantime, do one longer division, one multiplication w/2digit multiplier, one addition, and one subtraction problem every day. We don’t want to forget those while we learn something new.

When they are ready to leave the concrete, kids will say things like, “Can’t I just use numbers for these pieces?” It’s sort of like baby bottles and baby cups. Babies let you know when they’re ready to move on. (There are a few that don’t, need some coaching.)

Teachers generally move onto abstract way to quickly for LD kids.

And all brains don’t develop at the same rate, either. Sometimes we just have to keep the concrete going until the child is ready for the abstract. It happens differently in different children. (Broken record again. sorry)

You don’t sound like a broken record, I just found this place so it’s the first I’ve heard you say it. :) Thanks!

Bun