Help to understand what this means

My daughters strength is her non-verbal reasoning with shapes, and math…but if you put in verbiage…and multiple choice questions she doesn’t do well.

He is ADD and he is impulsive probably in his responses…I know my daughter is the same age and test taking skills have been the proverbial monkey on our back forever and a day..I am still working on it and it is getting better but I would see what he understands about the math language…equal, more than, factors, that kind of stuff..that may be the missing link..

Thanks, we will have his tutor address this, and see how he does…

First, try to take the “he’s a poor tester” out of your language with him. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that grows and grows and takes on a life of its own, even after the skills catch up. Note — I’m not saying that it isn’t true. Just saying that every time you say “and you don’t test well” makes anxiety stand up and cheer.
What I tell my students is that “okay, if you don’t test well, unfortunately that means you’re going to have to know this stuff that much better.” One thing that works is using mnemonics so that when they look at things like negative numbers and suddenly forget everything (when does “two negatives make a positive?” Multiplication? or Addition?) that they can sing to themselves, to the tune of add, add, add your signs.aka row, row row…..”Same sign, add and keep, different sign subtract, keep the sign of the biggest number, then you’ll be exact.” (Alas, this *is* easier to get 40-year-old women to do that 14-year-old boys… it is CUTE.)
What kinds of mistakes does he make? Some students can do problems when they’re explained — but it’s not internalized enough so that they can do them alone on a test. In that case it’s a knowledge level thing, not a test thing.
Yet another tack to take is teaching the concepts w/ hands-on materials & manipulatives. Is he a visual learner/thinker?

Sounds like this teacher isn’t the right one for him maybe.

But I’d also ask -have you looked closely at those tests? I’d check them out to see if they match up to the homework. Is he being asked the same kinds of questions on the tests as on the homework? How much time is he given to complete the test?

Does he have to show his work on the tests? Is he doing that? Where in his work on tests does he go wrong?

This is intriguing but a careful analysis and comparison of the homework vs. the tests might offer you some insight into what’s going on.

my now hs senior is an excellent student but had this struggle in Chemistry last year. He complained that he fully understood the problems they did in class and for homework, but the problems on the tests were so different he was at a loss.

Mind you, this chemistry teacher went around class when term grades went out, asking “this is your lowest grade, isnt it?” like he was on some sick mission.

But, even if your sons teacher isnt quite as odd, there could be some discrepancies going on!

Thanks for all the input…

In regard to the poor tester thing— I never say that to my son. When I ask him what the problem is, he tells me he just “chokes up”. He gets almost exactly half of the questions on every test right. I think he simply gets himself so tensed up that he just poops out half-way through. My feeling is that, if he can get half right, he can get the other half right. The questions appear to be right in line with the homework, and do not seem to get progressivly more difficut as the test goes on.

This teacher has told us that she basically has to teach to the middle of the road in her class, and the kids who are above or below that midline have to wing it.

We have pretty much decided to try to ignore the grades as long as he is understanding the concepts. Is this reasonable under the circumstances?

Hi!

One more thing about test taking…
It’s pretty common for kids to “poop out” in the middle of the test, especially when they are insecure about their abilities. I would recommend requesting the accommodation that your son be allowed to take the test in two parts. I do that with many of my high school ld kids in math class, and it really seems to help.

Good luck!

I am an LD teacher in Lafayette, Indiana. I am interested in researching the way in which students with the type od disabilieies you discussed are taught.
I believe that many gifted students with math LD problems are not really taught the conceptual ideas of math/algebra, but are rather given algorythms to memorize. Memorization can sometimes be a real problem. I believe that if students were tought the “language of math”, in other words. how to translate from English into mathematical sentences, math would become much easier. What is your reaction to this approach? Has it been tried with your student?

We have pretty much decided to try to ignore the grades as long as he is understanding the concepts. Is this reasonable under the circumstances?

Very reasonable. Not every parent can do that but I admire that you can. Does this happen in other classes as well - that he ‘poops out’ or just in chemistry and its peculiar challenges?

If it’s just in chemistry, I’d be doubly comfortable with your sound approach. If he does ‘poop out’ in other subjects’ tests, though, something else other than chemistry might be going on.

Ignore the grades as long as he is understanding the concepts — tricky, very tricky.
Two problems:
First, sooner or later, he is going to be forced to take a test. Maybe high school entrance, maybe high-stakes graduation, maybe PSAT and then SAT, maybe placement test in college. Sooner or later he gets to a point where the test is absolutely required with no exceptions. At that point, he wants to have testing skills. How is he going to learn and develop those skills?
Second, *how* so you judge that he is understanding the concepts?
Let me tell you about the “Clever Hans” syndrome. Clever Hans was a horse who could do astounding feats of mathematics. It started with counting and simple addition, then division and multiplication, then any sort of problem people could devise. Ask Hans any question that had a numerical answer, and he would tap out the numbers with his hoof. It didn’t matter who asked or how. Many professors came by to check and they found no evidence of cheating — the horse was a genius. Finally along came one who was more skeptical than others. He arranged that the questions were asked with all people behind screens so the horse couldn’t see them. Oops, no tapping at all. It turns out that the horse *was* a genius — but not at math, rather a genius at reading clues of body language. Hans would watch people as they tapped a finger or nodded their heads or moved their lips counting along with his hoof; and when they stopped and nodded or smiled a yes, so did he. I had a student like this in reading; he had arrived at Grade 4 with B’s and C’s in reading, and a pre-primer reading vocabulary of under fifty words. This student was *highly* gifted, very verbal, and very very good at reading people and getting you to *think* that he understood, when actually you were feeding him the answers, just like Hans. And just like Hans, he had been rewarded for this behaviour and did not understand what was so wrong with it. I had to be the mean nasty person who made him read the book, not the teacher’s face.
When I get a student who “doesn’t test well”, I always investigate further and try to find out where the problem occurs. I would most strongly recommend that you do the investigation as well.

I”ve had a fair amount of success focusing on teh “langauge of math” with my verbal thinkers and the more visual concepts with the (surprise!) more visual thinkers. I teach both to both but use one or the other as the “reference point.”
So “is” translates to “equals,” and when you’ve got that algebra equation, it’s a balance scale so that whatever you do to one side of the equals sign has to be done to the other or else it will throw it out of balance, etc. “Denominator” is really just “naming” the fraction (“nomin”) and you can’t add fractions from differnet “families” with different names…. etc… etc…

My daughters strength is her non-verbal reasoning with shapes, and math…but if you put in verbiage…and multiple choice questions she doesn’t do well.

He is ADD and he is impulsive probably in his responses…I know my daughter is the same age and test taking skills have been the proverbial monkey on our back forever and a day..I am still working on it and it is getting better but I would see what he understands about the math language…equal, more than, factors, that kind of stuff..that may be the missing link..

Thanks, we will have his tutor address this, and see how he does…

First, try to take the “he’s a poor tester” out of your language with him. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that grows and grows and takes on a life of its own, even after the skills catch up. Note — I’m not saying that it isn’t true. Just saying that every time you say “and you don’t test well” makes anxiety stand up and cheer.
What I tell my students is that “okay, if you don’t test well, unfortunately that means you’re going to have to know this stuff that much better.” One thing that works is using mnemonics so that when they look at things like negative numbers and suddenly forget everything (when does “two negatives make a positive?” Multiplication? or Addition?) that they can sing to themselves, to the tune of add, add, add your signs.aka row, row row…..”Same sign, add and keep, different sign subtract, keep the sign of the biggest number, then you’ll be exact.” (Alas, this *is* easier to get 40-year-old women to do that 14-year-old boys… it is CUTE.)
What kinds of mistakes does he make? Some students can do problems when they’re explained — but it’s not internalized enough so that they can do them alone on a test. In that case it’s a knowledge level thing, not a test thing.
Yet another tack to take is teaching the concepts w/ hands-on materials & manipulatives. Is he a visual learner/thinker?

Sounds like this teacher isn’t the right one for him maybe.

But I’d also ask -have you looked closely at those tests? I’d check them out to see if they match up to the homework. Is he being asked the same kinds of questions on the tests as on the homework? How much time is he given to complete the test?

Does he have to show his work on the tests? Is he doing that? Where in his work on tests does he go wrong?

This is intriguing but a careful analysis and comparison of the homework vs. the tests might offer you some insight into what’s going on.

my now hs senior is an excellent student but had this struggle in Chemistry last year. He complained that he fully understood the problems they did in class and for homework, but the problems on the tests were so different he was at a loss.

Mind you, this chemistry teacher went around class when term grades went out, asking “this is your lowest grade, isnt it?” like he was on some sick mission.

But, even if your sons teacher isnt quite as odd, there could be some discrepancies going on!

Thanks for all the input…

In regard to the poor tester thing— I never say that to my son. When I ask him what the problem is, he tells me he just “chokes up”. He gets almost exactly half of the questions on every test right. I think he simply gets himself so tensed up that he just poops out half-way through. My feeling is that, if he can get half right, he can get the other half right. The questions appear to be right in line with the homework, and do not seem to get progressivly more difficut as the test goes on.

This teacher has told us that she basically has to teach to the middle of the road in her class, and the kids who are above or below that midline have to wing it.

We have pretty much decided to try to ignore the grades as long as he is understanding the concepts. Is this reasonable under the circumstances?

Hi!

One more thing about test taking…
It’s pretty common for kids to “poop out” in the middle of the test, especially when they are insecure about their abilities. I would recommend requesting the accommodation that your son be allowed to take the test in two parts. I do that with many of my high school ld kids in math class, and it really seems to help.

Good luck!

I am an LD teacher in Lafayette, Indiana. I am interested in researching the way in which students with the type od disabilieies you discussed are taught.
I believe that many gifted students with math LD problems are not really taught the conceptual ideas of math/algebra, but are rather given algorythms to memorize. Memorization can sometimes be a real problem. I believe that if students were tought the “language of math”, in other words. how to translate from English into mathematical sentences, math would become much easier. What is your reaction to this approach? Has it been tried with your student?

We have pretty much decided to try to ignore the grades as long as he is understanding the concepts. Is this reasonable under the circumstances?

Very reasonable. Not every parent can do that but I admire that you can. Does this happen in other classes as well - that he ‘poops out’ or just in chemistry and its peculiar challenges?

If it’s just in chemistry, I’d be doubly comfortable with your sound approach. If he does ‘poop out’ in other subjects’ tests, though, something else other than chemistry might be going on.

Ignore the grades as long as he is understanding the concepts — tricky, very tricky.
Two problems:
First, sooner or later, he is going to be forced to take a test. Maybe high school entrance, maybe high-stakes graduation, maybe PSAT and then SAT, maybe placement test in college. Sooner or later he gets to a point where the test is absolutely required with no exceptions. At that point, he wants to have testing skills. How is he going to learn and develop those skills?
Second, *how* so you judge that he is understanding the concepts?
Let me tell you about the “Clever Hans” syndrome. Clever Hans was a horse who could do astounding feats of mathematics. It started with counting and simple addition, then division and multiplication, then any sort of problem people could devise. Ask Hans any question that had a numerical answer, and he would tap out the numbers with his hoof. It didn’t matter who asked or how. Many professors came by to check and they found no evidence of cheating — the horse was a genius. Finally along came one who was more skeptical than others. He arranged that the questions were asked with all people behind screens so the horse couldn’t see them. Oops, no tapping at all. It turns out that the horse *was* a genius — but not at math, rather a genius at reading clues of body language. Hans would watch people as they tapped a finger or nodded their heads or moved their lips counting along with his hoof; and when they stopped and nodded or smiled a yes, so did he. I had a student like this in reading; he had arrived at Grade 4 with B’s and C’s in reading, and a pre-primer reading vocabulary of under fifty words. This student was *highly* gifted, very verbal, and very very good at reading people and getting you to *think* that he understood, when actually you were feeding him the answers, just like Hans. And just like Hans, he had been rewarded for this behaviour and did not understand what was so wrong with it. I had to be the mean nasty person who made him read the book, not the teacher’s face.
When I get a student who “doesn’t test well”, I always investigate further and try to find out where the problem occurs. I would most strongly recommend that you do the investigation as well.

I”ve had a fair amount of success focusing on teh “langauge of math” with my verbal thinkers and the more visual concepts with the (surprise!) more visual thinkers. I teach both to both but use one or the other as the “reference point.”
So “is” translates to “equals,” and when you’ve got that algebra equation, it’s a balance scale so that whatever you do to one side of the equals sign has to be done to the other or else it will throw it out of balance, etc. “Denominator” is really just “naming” the fraction (“nomin”) and you can’t add fractions from differnet “families” with different names…. etc… etc…