This Week I am Reading ... Mr Nick McDonald

Mr Nick McDonald is Subject Guardian for Mathematics with the pleasure of teaching maths to pupils in the Upper School. Nick shares his review of It Just Doesn’t Add up below.

Here, I want to share with you a review of the book I am reading now, following two training courses I have been on very recently. This book is a great guide, showing that there are things you can do to improve your life – even if you suffer from severe dyscalculia. Paul Moorcroft himself has this ‘gift’, and yet he achieved A-Levels, studied at several universities, and became a professor at several others!

As technical books go, this one is a real easy read. Designed to be accessible, it charts the reader through what dyscalculia is, the symptoms, testing for it, teaching dyscalculics, how parents can help, for adult sufferers, and a wide variety of strategies and coping mechanisms to make life easier.

Generally, people with dyscalculia (along with the oft co-occurring dyslexia) are more creative than people without them. There are many well publicised cases of high achievers with either or both of these. These conditions can make your life difficult: however, finding a career you love and excelling in it is not uncommon. Having the support to cope with this type of adversity is key: when supported, putting in the effort to succeed is critical. Perhaps it is because nothing comes easily that helps you achieve more than others, for whom academic work may come more easily.

At school and home , typical strategies include:

• Start from what the child understands.

• Move from the physical reality: then move towards making a picture of the problem to be solved.

Only then can it make the meaning clear. (Look up Concrete, Pictorial, Abstract.)

• Take and allow much longer to deal with a problem, typically 3 times, for everything.

• Use physical resources (manipulatives, for counting and seeing what the problem is, for example).

• Recall and reinforce previous content. Steiner education is perfectly well set up in this regard.

• Differentiation – providing scaffolding to allow access to the content or problem to be solved; or provide a different type of task – or a different task altogether.

• Differentiation - peer support and self help techniques – believe you can get through it and that the

resources are there somewhere, but just need to be found.

• Repeatedly check understanding – your own and others.

• Perform more repetitions – “practice makes permanent”.

• Make sure the environment is conducive to learning – well-resourced and pleasant.

Paul’s message is “Just because you can’t count, doesn’t mean that you don’t count!