I had a very depressing chat with my 14 year old NLD son’s math teacher today—learned he had failed his grade 9 applied math course. Because of his NLD, math has always been extremely challenging, and our psychologist told us that he probably would not be able to do much other than functional math. Things had not been going particulrly well all year, but we had hoped that he would be at least able to pass. He had been getting help 1 period a day in resource room and we had a math tutor once a week as well.
His IEP has accomodations for test-taking and as far as I know the school gave him the accommodations that they were supposed to.
The school has very little to offer at this point, suggesting summer school as a way to get the credit, or a transfer to another school (requiring bussing) at which he would have access to a very basic math program. I cannot bear the thought of sending him to summer school because he is always so stressed out at the end of the school year that he really needs a break. It would be a terrific battle of wills to even get him to go. Besides which, his memory is so bad I’m afraid he will have forgotten all this semester’s math by the time summer rolls around. I am equally opposed to a transfer to another school, since this school has a good reputation, it is small and he has friends there.
My son pretends not to care about his mark, but I know he is dissapointed-he was pretty certain he could pass.
Does anybody have any words of advice right now or thoughts on any possible ways to deal with this? Besides the failure of this course I am terrified about next semester when he will have a much heavier academic load than he has had to date, and no time in resource room. Overall, his marks have not been good this sememster, so of course, I’m ultimately concerned that he will lose interest entirely and simply stop making any effort at school at all. Thanks. Judy
Re: discouraged x 2
Can he simply repeat the course? How many maths does he have to take to graduate? Is Algebra 1 required in your state? It is in ours. Up until now, LD math kids could exempt the Alg. 1 and take other math courses, but they are beginning a required exit exam next year that WILL have Algebra on the math section, so that is going to cause big problems for the LD math kids (not to mention plenty of low regular kids!!!).
Janis
I’m not sure about NLD and math, I hope someone can help - our problems are
reading and writing.
I just know where you are right now. Hanging on by your fingernails.
And not wanting to stress your son.
Is he into computer and computer games? - my dyslexic son does reading
tutorial computer games in the summer, and weekends and at school,
Also any of those fantasy games that require reading
and writing - ‘mom, spell ‘total annihilation’ for me.’
I looked long and hard to find reading programs that seem to
address what he needs. Does this LD board have a section for
math. I found help on the teaching reading section when I
was looking for computer programs.
Anne