I home school my lovely 10 yr. old dd who has dyslexia. She is reading much better due to great therapy. She has problems with performing multiple step commands, so it is no surprise to me that she has problems with multiple-step word problems. I have shown her how to do these problems numerous times. I draw pictures of the different steps, and I point out to her each step. I ask her questions such as “What do you know at first?” Then I will ask her, “What do you need to know or find out next?” “Do you add or subtract with this step (not to mult./div. yet)?”
She can do this with all of my pulling her through the problem. However once I leave her then she falls apart.
Should I continue to do these problems with her orally? Should I hold back and not pull her so much through the problems? Is there a good format that you use to help students?
I try to get her to draw pictures to help her through the problem, but she doesn’t like to do them. I’m not talking about “high art” here! LOL!
Well, any advice would be great!
Thanks,
Jan P.
Thanks for the reminder.
I will pull out my Peggy Kaye book. I had forgotten that I had it! I will look into the Burn’s book. Thanks for the help.
Sincerely,
Jan P.
Could be some work on understanding the language might help — take a peek at Marilyn Burns’ books. Getting familiar with “subtraction language” by seeing it in the real world could be good too — Peggy Kaye’s math games book is good for that.
Try writing the steps down and standing there and prompting her by pointing to them, or asking “what step comes next?” But what will help most is if she can make some kind of sense of this stuff.