Anyone heard of Spectrum Math?

McGraw Hill publishes a number of workbooks under the SPECTRUM heading- math, language arts, geography. You’ll find them at any teacher supply store and sometimes at bookstores like Barnes and Noble. I’ve always gotten the impression they were marketing them to parents as a supplement to school work- a way for parents to make sure their kids had really learned the basics for 4th grade math or 6th grade writing.

Jean

I think Spectrum is not doing the job, but then nothing else I’m doing at home seems to be working really well either, and I need some suggestions.
We’ve done Math Facts the Fun Way but haven’t gotten the gains from it others have made. My son recalls about 65-75% of the stories, but he doesn’t routinely apply them to a computation problem unless he’s reminded. We did the stories in the Spring and played Math Lotto all summer. He seemed to be progressing well, but we slacked off at the start of school and now he seems to have regressed.
We also tried the widely-praised Quarter Mile Math drill program last Spring, but again I can’t rave about this either. My son is a very slow processor and I think this program demands a certain level of automaticity. He hated it. He uses TouchMath (which I also taught him), his fingers, and scratch sheet “sticks”.
I suspect he can’t get to the next step in the process of abstraction because he is unable to employ visualization/imagery for math. I suspect this because I had discalulia (sp) myself (math facts weren’t automatic until my 20s) but used a visualization strategy (seeing dice with lit up dots and counting up from the highest number.) I’ve explained my strategy to him but he doesn’t get it or can’t do likewise.
I am wondering if Cloud Nine Math (Lindamood Bell) might help but wonder if this is a program that lends itself to use at home as an add on to what the school does.
I should add that he needs vision therapy, has CAPD, has been recommended for FastForWord and PACE, scores as low average on the nonverbal side of the WISC (one assessor wonders if his visual problems affected his score here), high average on the verbal but superior verbally on the Woodcock-J Cognitive. The assessor did the W-J Cognitive because she realized his slow processing affected his scores on the WISC.
Last, should I even worry about this until after we’ve done FFWd and PACE? Thanks for your input.

With what you are describing, Spectrum Math would not even be in the ballpark.

Have you looked into nonverbal learning disability (NLD)? NLD kids really struggle with math, yet have good verbal abilities. Websites are http://www.nldline.com and http://www.nldontheweb.org. NLD kids also have problems with visual-spatial relationships.

Have you looked into NeuroNet? CAPD often disrupts vestibular development, and vestibular problems in turn cause slow processing and learning difficulties. NeuroNet addresses the vestibular side effects of CAPD on a very basic level. Website is http://www.neuroacoustics.com.

NeuroNet incorporates Balametrics (http://www.balametrics.com). I know a number of people who have observed significant improvements in processing speed when a child does work on the balance board (both exercises on the balance board, and actual work such as reading while balancing on the board).

My approach would be to concentrate on the most basic sensory/motor level therapies first — NeuroNet, vision therapy and FastForWord. Once those are out of the way, I would concentrate on PACE. I would leave math to the very last.

If NLD is part of the picture, it would affect some of your choices. For example, you might want to be sure the PACE provider understands NLD sufficiently to be able to modify the program appropriately (and understand that results may not be typical). Also, you would probably find that a highly verbal approach to math is more effective than manipulatives or pictures.

Mary

His reading ability was poor (gr. 1.3 at gr. 2.3) but was quickly remediated to grade level via LiPs and Barton (Orton-Gillingham). No problems with social interaction and self-care etc. He is at grade level in reading but not in writing, spelling, or, of course, math. I think NLD kids do well academically (on the verbal side) but have social interaction problems, do they not? There is a big verbal/nonverbal spread, but is that enough for NLD? Weaknesses on the nonverbal (PS 85) side show a significant spread of 24 points compared to the verbal (WISC), and I guess an even greater spread on the W-J (Cog.) (given superior to very superior scores on the verbal side as compared to below/low average scores on the W-J cognitive-nonverbal; here, though, on the verbal side, he was not required to process or expresse lengthy verbalizations). There was no significant scatter on the nonverbal WISC (whereas scatter was so dramatic as to make the score meaningless on the verbal side), but how much could vision problems affect the picture here? (He was at the time borderline for with tracking & visual field.) (The lowest scores were for Picture Arrangement - 5; and Symbol Search - 7; the rest were 8s and 9s. On the W-J tests of achievement, he scored avg. for computation (but with use of fingers) and low average for math reasoning.
Lastly, he was assessed by an audiologist who also is trained in and offers Neuronet & PACE in addition to FastForWord (She is an answer to my prayers!). I assume she feels Neuronet is not an immediate priority since she recommends FFWd (#1 priority) and PACE, but I didn’t think to question her re Neuronet. (If the school district will release him from 1:15-3:30 each afternoon, we plan to start FFWd in 2 weeks and do PACE in the summer.) As you say, having the right math pgm. may not strongly matter at this point as there are a lot of more fundamental issues here! What do you make of the NLD hypothesis given all this? Thanks for your input.

But I can give you a little information on the vision side. My daughter had a very restricted visual field, poor tracking, fine saccades in the 1st percentile, focusing speed of a 3yo at age 8, and other severe developmental vision delays. She didn’t do exactly the tests you are describing, but her developmental vision delays did not seem to interfere with her visual-spatial abilities or visual reasoning. For example, she could do tangrams, logical sequencing of diagrams, etc. just fine. So, at least in our experience, vision problems didn’t interfere with her development of nonverbal reasoning at all.

Based on what I have picked up as a parent over the years, the subtest scatter on the verbal indicates LD. The lack of scatter on the nonverbal seems to me to point to something more fundamental. If it’s not NLD, then I would suspect that the CAPD is severe and has disrupted vestibular development. FFW addresses the “decoding deficit” subtype of CAPD and a few other problems associated with CAPD, but it doesn’t do anything for vestibular development. Vestibular problems would show up in areas such as balance, rhythm, timing and coordination — clumsiness, inability to keep time to music by clapping, trouble learning to ride a bike, that sort of thing. I guess I’d ask your provider if he’s a good candidate for NeuroNet.

Not all NLD children have the social issues. Good verbal skills are typical of NLD but, if there is a co-existing problem such as CAPD that interferes with reading, that aspect of NLD could be suppressed. I think the more definitive feature of NLD may be the problem with visual-spatial relationships. There does have to be a significant difference between verbal IQ and performance IQ scores, I think.

Mary

My son is somewhat like yours. He has a significant spread between performance and verbal (perf=85, verbal=108, overall=99), and has been diagnosed with CAPD. He however is very good at math conceptually but has had some trouble acquiring automaticity with math facts. He also has had (and still does to some extent) visual spatial difficulties that have interferred with math. I am not sure how much light I can shine on your difficulties but I will try.

I have wondered about NVLD too. My son does have visual processing problems though—but I have had several different specialists tell me those stem from his vestibular problems which are part of his CAPD profile. I do know however that CAPD and NVLD can coexist, which changes the the way NVLD apppears. You don’t have the strong decoding, for example, if you also have CAPD. I do think that a scatter from 5-9 on nonverbal part is fairly significant. My son’s is from 6-10. (I have seen him improve greatly on some of the visual things he did poorly on after PACE). On the verbal he ranged from 8-13.

We have done FFW which helped with decoding part of CAPD and auditory memory. It did nothing for auditory integration, however, which has proved to be a more difficult issue. The audiologist never mentioned auditory integration at the first testing. I think that decoding masked the problem.

We have very successfully done neuronet. I can not recommend this program highly enough, if your child fits the profile. It focuses on the vestibular system and, for us, has been the link between his visual issues and auditory ones. In fact, we are now doing visual work with vestibular. This is because straight vision therapy helped but did not resolve completely his problems. The therapist thinks that is becuase of the lack of integration of body work (as opposed to straight computer and desk work).

We also have done PACE. I have seen very clearly the limitations of PACE when there are still unresolved sensory-motor issues. We have seen gains but not as much as I hoped and frankly, not as much as we got from NN. I plan to return to PACE after we finish NN. So my advice would be to make sure you have resolved sensory issues before doing PACE.

We have had good success with Math FAct s the Fun way for multiplication but we have done it after doing NN (for 6 months) and PACE. My son likes the stories and seems to be becoming automatic on it. We have used quarter math as well and found we had to start at a very low level. I saw increases in automaticity but am thinking of doing the addition facts the fun way because he is actually more automatic in multiplication (the ones we’ve done) now than addition.

I know all kids with NVLD do not have social problems and that they often show up later. Does he have trouble with comprehension of reading material? Does he tend to take things very literally?

Personally, I would do FFW and then have a CAPD reeval. If you are lucky, that will be the end of the CAPD. IT is for many people. If not, then you are in my boat and Interactive Metronome and Neuronet are the only therapies available that I know of that deal with other sorts of CAPD. If the CAPD is resolved, then it makes sense to move to PACE. Otherwise, I would pursue other therapies.

I also would consider getting a complete neuro-psych done by someone familiar with NVLD. I think your son has a more serious sort of math disability than mine, although my son’s reading skills have proved to be more resistant to remediation.

On Cloud 9 is supposed to be a very good program. It teaches both visualization of math facts (which you seemed to have naturally) and the language of math which is often a challenge to kids with language based LD.

My son did very poorly at a five year old level on the nonverbal part of PACE in the pretest. I think it is possible to have poor nonverbal reasoning in a testing situation if the child has poor visual discrimination. I spoke to a PACE trainer about this and this was her take too. She said a high score correlates with intelligence while a low score could mean low nonverbal reasoning or weak visual discrimination.

Weak visual discrimination can play havoc on all sorts of tests. I had an evaluator claim my son had major problems with long term memory. I know this is not true. Turns out the test relied on visual skills and so the two were confounded.

Another thing that can interfere with performance IQ scores is an inability to follow directions. We did FFW before he had the testing done. He had scored in the 70’s before FFW and the evaluator said that she didn’t think he understood what to do. Now there was also a three year gap in testing so maturity could have helped too.

Thanks, Beth. You’re right; there is a significant weakness on the nonverbal WISC (for Picture Arrangement, 5%ile, which tests temporal-sequential reasoning and shows up in difficulties/confusion with tasks requiring sequencing operations). There is a variety of opinion on the contribution of vision problems to the nonverbal score. It will be interesting to see his scores in a few years after we’ve done all the therapies.
As for NVLD, we will certainly check it out lateron if he is still having problems down the road. His assessment counsellor didn’t think he was NVLD, but then I’m not sure how much she knows about that disorder. As for me, I will do more research on it further on. I’m not sure I can handle another label right now after the CAPD identification and FM/Easy Listener device recommendation.
As a sidenote, I now wonder if I have (had) NVLD. I was educated in the dinosaur age, pre testing, but struggled hugely with math and science. My SAT scores reflected a whopping 55-60 point spread between my math and language aptitude and achievement scores (the latter being an area in which I was precocious early). I’m not sure how SAT scores were used here in Ontario, Canada during the brief time they were used, but luckily they didn’t prevent my getting into a university arts program. I didn’t have social issues, except shyness, but I was pretty much out of the loop in team sports and was hugely disorganized. As a Spec. Ed & English teacher I am very organized, but I think I expend more energy in this area than others have to. Needless to say I have a lot of empathy for my LD students!
As a further sidenote, in my almost neurotic compulsion with researching everything to death, I called the CAPD audiologist at our local teaching hospital yesterday to get another expert opinion on FFWD. Her experience with it is mainly anecdotal, from parents of CAPD kids who’ve used it. Her opinion is do it now, the sooner the better because the self-esteem issues with CAPD are so huge. Just between the last two sentences (oddly I went offline a moment) a call came from my son’s principal confirming that the superintendent has approved my application for afternoon release time for FFWD. I could cry for joy. In fact I am crying. My faith in education bureaucrats is restored! We are lucky to live in a district where partial home-schooling is allowed and where teachers like me can work part-time! (Mind you it would be even nicer if the school system could afford to deliver this program, which is almost unheard of outside Toronto &
area here.) Thanks for your support.

Just don’t expect your son to come home from school and do fFW for 2 hours!!! Take a break first with a snack and then do it. My son had to have it broken up into chunks but you’ll find what works for you. He used to ride his bike between games. We never did more than 3 at a time and that was with a break.

Also, think about a reward system. My son did not like doing this at all, although eventually he got into it. I didn’t think he would object so much because we had done Earobics but he disliked not having a choice of activities.

Doyou know you can become the provider for $150? I did that and it wasn’t hard. Saves money for other therapy down the road.

I don’t know if you have ever heard of this program Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment but, it sounds like your son has a real problem developing strategies. The IE program develops deficient cognitive functions. I teach this program and it does amazing things for students who are lacking strategies. It does not teach math or reading skills but logic and reasoning. It hlps students understand thier thinking and it helps them to verbalize their strategie. They learn to develp a plan and evaluate its effectiveness. They learn to see where they made errors in their strategy. The website for more information is: www.icelp.org
Nan

Sounds interesting. Thank you/

Thanks for the advice on breaks. We have some constraints (ie I work 2/3 time and can’t leave before 1:00; luckily we are 3 mins. from home and my school is next door to my son’s). Does this sound realistic? — A 15 min. break after we get home; 3 games (60 mins.) with a very brief breather between, followed by a 15 or 20 min. break and then the last 2 games with a 5 minute break between. I will need to make care arrangements of some sort for my second son, who is too young to walk home on his own, but that should be do-able.
My son was very attracted to the pgm. in the intro. session we had with the audiologist, and he is very keen to do the program. But I realize it will be tough and I will need to build in rewards.
Thanks.

Sorry, I must have spelled it wrong. It is Feuersten’s Instrumental enrichment.

Let me try this one more time
Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment
www.icelp.org

Honestly, my son couldn’t have done that but that doesn’t mean yours won’t be able. Could you do one before school ? That would make it a bit easier.

We could, but the pressure of getting 2 kids and me out the door on top of that…I don’t know. It’s certainly a possibility for Plan B. Did you do am time and then work? Which aspect of my plan seems most potentially troublesome—3 games in a row, or insufficient break time?

I should add that he is 8 and 1/2, extremely determined, and likes computers. He is keen to do the program now (loved the intro. session) says he knows he has a listening problem. I’m eager to get him started but scared too as to how it will go. I don’t want to burn him out. (I also have to pass the test, but I take it it’s not too hard. Can I cram the material in 3 days? ) I had planned to wait until the summer (as a result of advice on these boards) but then l I got his CAPD report, learned he needed an FM/Easy Listener, got the recommendation from another audiologist that the sooner one starts the better due to the self-esteem issues around this disorder and, finally, got pm release time for him to do it.

I gather you can’t back out once you start (unless the mastery criteria are exceeded). Thanks for your advice. After I look over the manual, if I get cold feet, I’ll postpone.

This book is out of print, so I’ll look for a used copy. (Amazon.com also had two different spellings!)

Actually, since you’re the provider, you can make allowances and stretch the program out. You might want to start out with the regular schedule and then, after awhile, drop back to 4 days a week instead of 5, or even 4 games a day instead of 5. The ideal schedule given by the company is just a composite they have found to be optimal. In my opinion the program is not compromised by cutting some slack to suit circumstances, particularly if you maintain their schedule for the first four weeks or so. The risk in not doing games on a sufficiently intense schedule is that progress is slowed (because the child backslides more in-between games), which reduces enthusiasm and drags out the program, so that people are more likely to quit before maximum gains are achieved.

You are lucky your son is motivated and determined. That should help a lot.

My 9yo dd would not have been able to keep the schedule you have in mind, but kids differ a lot in their tolerance for sustained work. A more realistic schedule for us would have been two sessions of 2 games separated by a 10-minute break, plus one game by itself. The games can be very tiring to someone with auditory problems, and 5 minutes isn’t much of a rest. My advice is to observe and adjust the scheduling as needed to be realistic.

When you sit down to actually study the material, take notes as you go through the tutorial. These can come in handy when you take the test. I don’t think they have any time limits on the test. I think you can take it, find out what you got wrong and, if you didn’t pass, re-take the test right away. However, it’s pretty easy to pass the first time if you keep your notes handy (at least it was when I did it a year and a half ago).

Mary

I am a teacher in a special education classroom of students with behavior problems and learning problems. I use the Spectrum Math books sometimes as a supplement to the textbook I use in my classroom. Sometimes I use just the Spectrum Math books alone. I like these books alot for a few reasons. One of these reasons is that I can use a different book for each individual student depending on what level he/she is working at. The books all look similar and this keeps my students from feeling like they are not doing what everyone else is doing. I also like these books because they have good examples on each page and the students can look back at these if they forget how to do the problems. This way they are helping themselves.

I”m jumping in a little late here… but if he has trouble with rote memory, then may well have as much trouble remembering (and remembering to use) the stories in “Math the fun way” as he does the facts themselves.

Is he a “big picture” kid? Lots of math is taught *very* part-to-whole — here are the steps, and when you’ve got all the steps, we’ll explain what it all means (and sometimes they don’t — they sorta hope you’ll figure it out). FUnny thing is that mathematicians tend to be more “whole-to-part” learners. They just learned math from their parents, not elementary teachers. (I wish I were kidding.)

If I remember it right, Spectrum is a pretty structured part-to-whole kind of program. I like some aspects of it — the format, the way it includes lots of word problems — but I always thought it didn’t really *teach* the concepts… sort of let you practice and hoped you figured ‘em out.

How’s he do with other learning? I’ve got some ideas…

“NLD” is a heterogeneous group. WHen you get down to it, it’s just a little more specific than “LD.” It’s kind of the new term in town — and some peopel do attach more specific meanings to it. NLDs are often missed early on because kids with verbal skills look like they’re doing fine almost by definition (and sometimes they really are :)). So much school stuff is verbal stuff. And skewed skills can really mess with math understanding — if your strengths enable you to take shortcuts that really aren’t short cuts, you end up looking like you’re getting it because you figured out a “verbal logic” that doesn’t really work with the math.
FOrtunately, *good* verbal logic *does* work with math (unless you *really* want to be an astrophysicist). So with the right kind of teaching, those verbal strengths can be used to make sense of the weaker visual perceptions. What were his specific ups and downs? THe main thing w/ a slower processor is to LET IT BE SLOW. This stupid obsession with plowing through a book in a year… and then plowing through the *same* skills the next year, and the next, always too fast to get any of ‘em… yuck!

My kid brother actually made a deal w/ his mathteacher… she gave him D’s and let him proceed at his pace and fail every test, because the curriculum was mandated. He did get a 5 out of 5 on the A.P. test at the end of the year (and he *did* go on to get a degree in astrophysics, actually). So slow processors *can* succeed.

I”ve known parents who pulled their kdis from school entirely & homeschooled for a semester or a year just to work intensively on remediation.

You are so right — so much of the so-called “teaching” going on is a ritual of going the text — SPEED IS NOT LEARNING! If you get an idea and understand it and keep it in your mind, *that* is learning. If you copy the teacher monkey-see-monkey-do and then forget all about it and have to go through the same stuff every year, that is NOT learning. It is nice to get ideas fast and be able to do other things, but it’s jsut as valuable in the end to get ideas slowly. The main thing is to *learn* and *retain* and *use* the ideas. How fast is not going to matter in your adult life.

I’m definitely a whole-to-part thinker BUT I can do part-to whole *if* I have a goal in mind. I do serious math, have two years of grad school and want to get back and finish the doctorate in pure math, so yes, this is how many real mathematicians work. The math-as-trivia that is used in so many textbooks is very very frustrating to many mathematicians and scientists — the exact kids who have skills and good ideas in this stuff, who should tbe the next generation discovering new ideas in the field, are mentally destroyed in elementary school because they can’t handle the disconnected lists of junk that are taught in the name of math.Gradchools in the US literally cannot find enough American candidates to fill their programs. Unfortunately almost all the teachers are trained the same way and don’t know what real math is.

He doesn’t seem to have trouble remembering the stories so much as remembering to employ them as a fall-back strategy for computation problems.Maybe they don’t seem relevant to the problem at hand. (They aren’t.) Otherwise, conceptualization is good, but visuals are a good aid. He can follow a complex story (ex. Tom Swift, which my husband is reading to- him right now) with good understanding. He knew about 60% of the content for two recent tests before we started studying. Drawing pictures of plant parts, making some point form notes, playing wacky games (plant part charades: guess what I am and tell what I do) helped; studying notes on why pioneers came to Canada (list of reasons) and why settlement was heaviest around the St. Lawrence R. was “boring” until I got a shawl, and pretended to be a British, 19th c. mum whose son had to convince her to immigrate, and then not to keep heading inland once we got here. The notebooks didn’t come home any earlier for the LD kids (I was all set to complain about this) than for anyone else and we didn’t spend an inordinate time studying, but he managed to get perfect marks on both tests. It takes him awhile to dredge it up sometimes, but he has an excellent vocabulary, likes to know info. about abstract things and can recall it once learned. He can do amazing stuff with what he knows well but if he is not personally interested, he needs longer to get the picture in the first place.
I’m baffled on the math. My feeling is an Orton-Gillingham approach might help but there isn’t a lot out there in terms of resources. (An outfit in British Columbia teaches a course on Orton-Gillingham-inspired, multisensory math every summer; I haven’t ruled out taking a course.) He also can’t get counting by 2s (5s & 10s ok) from 12 to 20. I’m almost out of ideas on how to get him through this. (He says his teachers at school assume he knows it and don’t check. There is a good article in the InDepth section of this site on the importance of getting automaticity on this level before moving on.) He can count up into the hundreds but forgets where he was and jumps frequently. We drilled on what no. comes before and after …… for awhile until he got reasonably ok, but I don’t think he’s really solid here.Any ideas you have would be most welcome!

For twos—try having him sort the socks after drying. Have him put them in pairs, then count each pair by twos. (It helps if the paired socks are just folded, not rolled in a ball.) You could also give him two cents for each pair folded and counted.

Before, After—This is a suggestion I read about for teaching “between” (as in name a number between 20 and 30), but it could possibly work for before, after. Take a fork, and place it between the knife and spoon. Tell him the fork comes after the knife. Pick up the fork and place it down again. Tell him the fork comes between the spoon. Try several combinations. Then ask him to place the fork after the spoon and before the knife (or whatever).

Another variant would be to use a clock with just an hour hand (you can make this out of paper using a brad for the hand.) Show the hand just before the one, telling him that it is just before 1 o’clock. Then show him the hand after. After a couple of examples, have him practice placing the hour hand before or after various o’clocks. This is an adaption of an idea from the book “One Hand at a Time” about teaching time. It has lots of good ideas if he’s also having problems with that. It was recommended here by Robin G. and is available at Amazon, Barnes&Noble.

He *really* sounds like a bright kiddo who needs things to have their proper place in the “big picture” or they fall off the frame. Fortunately, for bright kids that frame can be pretty big and hold lots of stuff— *if* it’s put in the right place and connected to enough other ideas.

The socks idea is a good one :) Please do check out the times table book chapter that’s online at http://www.resourceroom.net/Products/toolstimes.asp because it was written for that way of thinking and it might just open up lots of math concepts for him. In general the “tricks” are based on math concepts, not unrelated stories — which doesn’t matter so much for most kids once they’ve got the facts down, but for some, it’s important.

Good suggestions…thanks.

Thanks, Sue. He has a lot of strengths. Directionality is still an issue, and I understand that this impacts on math learning though I’m not sure how. I wonder also how his CAPD affects this type of learning; for example, while he has the concept of “before” and “after” and says, “I know in counting by 2s you skip one/add two to your last number, he always seems to miss 16 and/or 18; he gets shaky in the 20s plus because he often forgets what number he said last. I wonder if a weakness in auditory memory has an impact when you are hearing your own voice? I expect it might. Also he has what is called “selective attention”, which means if he hears an extraneous noise (or has an extraneous thought…this is rote stuff after all and not too rivetting) he’s lost. Although we work alone in the kitchen or living room, there is the odd intruding noise. I will try the fork, knife and spoon idea Marie offered just to test if he’s as good as I think he is at the concept level for “before” and “after”. I’ll also try the socks idea (before they all get lost in the dryer!). (Offering a reward might help keep him focused.) Thanks for the website suggestion..

I’ve tried to type this in twice and aol keeps timing me out — folks, avoid aol like the plague.

Anyway, in short and in hope it gets on the board:

I saw a severe before and after problem with a kid age 12 whom I tutored; Kleinfelter’s syndrome.

He could DO before and after just fine, babysat his brother, found his way around town even though he couldn’t read signs, etc. Also passed stupid “psychologist’s” tests on ordering which consisted of *physically* re-ordering cartoons.

*Verbally*, though, he was blind to the concept. Couldn’t answer whether he put shoes on before or after socks (but dressed himself fine) or whether breakfast came before or after lunch (but fed himself and brother fine.)

It took me some time to plumb the depths of his math confusion — school said he could add and subtraqct and was doing three times tables, strange when he couldn’t do the above or count accurately past six.

I ran out of tutoring time before getting to work on these concepts, but I would sugggest using the physical competences to apply to the math skills — use beads on an abacus, etc. This would also keep his attention on the topic.

My son, with CAPD, has basically remediated directionality issues. He still isn’t totally automatic but he is much better and it does influence math. I think it comes in with adding columns ect, although since I never had it, I can’t be sure. I do know that he improved in leaps and bounds when this was resolved. I patiently taught him tricks like he wrote with his right hand and then we did a lot of drill when we did PACE. But we saw improvements before we did PACE. We just met for his IEP meeting and he now is at the top of a lower group in a regular classroom for math. Last two years he was in resource. So I can tell you that getting directionality, and other visual spatial relations down makes a big difference.

The language concepts with math can also be a challenge. What I have done, and others have suggested, is make things as concrete as possible. I remember using a round table and standing in front and in back of it to try and get him to understand front and back. And just today at the IEP meeting the slt told me that he didn’t know what draw a line “through” meant. It seems with CAPD that everything has to be explicitly taught.