I am a high school special educator in Vermont, where we mainstream 80% of students. I am seeking ideas about how to help a young 10th grade student who is really struggling in geometry. She can easily define all of the terms (supplementary angle, acute angle, etc.) but put a piece of paper in front of her with the drawings (a set of 3 or more angles), and she can not make out one from the other. If she cannot visualize these angles, the rest of the year will be bleak. Anybody have any strategies that have worked for this matter?
Background: LD in math calc and reasoning…but does well with a little support. Cognitive low average…visual-motor area of weakness (big surprise there!), abstract-verbal reasoning relative strength…quite motivated, including by parental retribution if not succeeding at B or above…not that I agree with it, but it does creat performance anxiety issues…
i agree with victoria
but…
Geometry is really hard if you are l.d. in math and have those blessed visual motor issues. The worse case senario is to literally trace them out, sit and have the student trace the ‘figures’ over and over until they can conceptualise them and then place thsoe traced figures into real situations where the formulas come into play. I do that, but Victoria is way smarter than I! I am responding to this becasue of personal experience.
If you allow the students to use ti 83’s then make sure this youngster has the program for areas. It is a flash program that comes with the ti 83 plus’s…it is on their web site for free also. This areas program makes you sit and learn of the shapes that are soo important in geometry. It is really neat becasue you can sit and see a parallelogram being drawn out right on your calculator. I am using a parallelogram as an example.
The areas program is like grade eight math, really. But it is wonderful to see those shapes drawn out in animation because that is a hard thing to learn to do in longhand.
There are also nice programs seperate from the one I described that just plain give the formulas. I think that sometimes having hte formula is nice becasue you still need to know how to apply the formula but it can lessen a bit of a burden with regards to memorisation and free the mind up to application.
I think that Victoria is spot on with the multicolored stuff. That is hard to follow. If you are l.d. like this youngster…you are going to be having a ahrd time reading a map and stuff…multicolored geometry homework will trip you out. Sometimes just arranging things by topic and highlighting the name of the topic in a easy on the eyes highlighter color is cool. That forces your eyes to know that like the pyhtagorean theroum…is a^2+B^2 and whatnot and frees your mind up to keeping your math homework organised.
But, I shoudl take typing lessons! This was all just my two cents.
Re: LD and Geometry
Thanks to folks for their help…we are trying the multicolors for the angles, having tried other things. I tend to lean toward the premise that part of this issue is a correspondance weakness with fractions. When looking a various cominations of angles to decide f they are supplimentary, etc…the start to act like adding fraction (parts of the whole) and we are looking into this…
Re: LD and Geometry
My personal experience is that nobody can do fractions any more. OK, I exaggerate. 70% to 80% have given up on doing fractions and most of the rest are very slow and uncomfortable with them. Anything that looks like a pie diagram can indeed cause shut down. However, that’s probably just surface; underneath is frequently a profound discomfort with anything that looks like a math diagram of any sort.
Re: LD and Geometry
How true concerning fractions…however we keep hammering away here in Vermont, and with our State Standards, seem to be keeping a relatively large percentage of students above water when it comes to fractions…now understanding the connection between decimals and percentages…that is another matter.
Interestingly enough, when we combined the colors with the idea of parts of a whole (when combining two or more angles) she draws a circle around the outer part of the drawing, and then she has a significantly better understanding of the drawing and the interplay/relationship of the angles. She seems to connect the degrees in a circle with the parts of a pie graph, and she gets it then! Go figure…but then again, I am certainly no math teacher, so maybe it makes total sense. Again-you and the other responders have been very helpful…thank you!
Just a little technique that may help: have the student trace over the lines under discussion with her finger as she names them.
Also draw sub-diagrams, pulling out the items under discussion. Have her draw the sub-diagrams.
Sometimes people want to highlight in multicolour, but this adds more visual confusion and I disrecommend it.
And please try to bring those parents to reality; if this is a real geometry course, a B for a low-functioning kid is next to impossible. I would be happy with a C and complimentary about passing with a D. They are going to stress her completely out if they insist on B’s and A’s all the way through.