Last week, I updated you a little on our homeschooling activities but added that it hasn’t been all beer and skittles. Read on….
We had a problem. Little Dinosaur is a whiz at maths. She can be playing with her dolls, colouring in a picture, essentially not paying attention to the teacher. But, when the teacher asks her a question, she’ll answer it. That was the surprised revelation from one of her pre-primary teachers. The woman didn’t want to believe it, but had to admit that LD’s mathematical ability was above average.
As you can imagine, as a result of this, we were feeling pretty confident putting her in school. Then her Maths marks started to drop. And drop. And we were facing a cliff. We didn’t pull our kids out of traditional school because of this, but for other reasons. And when I took over LD’s math instruction, I found something horrifying. At the age of eight, she didn’t even know her two times table.
I queried her more closely about what happened at school and discovered that (a) even in exams, she used to copy answers from a friend of hers, and (b) the teacher ignored a whole swathe of the class, concentrating instead on the brightest students. With no attention and no motivation, LD just stopped caring about a subject that she was having difficulties with anyway.
The first six months of homeschooling were filled with drills. Multiplication tables written down, recited out loud, five times, ten times. She’d be able to do complex long division and then, one week later, not even know what three times two equals. It was driving me insane! Until J intervened one morning, pointed out that our little girl was not doing this just to get a rise out of me, and suggested I do a bit of research to get to the bottom of the problem. And so I did.
The problem, as far as I can ascertain, is dyscalculia and we should’ve seen it coming. LD was born two months premature and was in Intensive Care for a month. The doctors constantly told us that she might face developmental problems when she got older. Seems they were right.
Just as dyslexia is a learning difficulty associated with language, dyscalculia is a learning difficulty associated with mathematics. Although there can be a genetic component to the disorder, J and I have ruled that out because we both come from families with strong mathematical abilities. We think there’s a physical, neurological deficiency in LD’s brain that’s causing the problem, linked to lack of long-term retention of core mathematical concepts.
Let me speak plainly. Education in Asia is primitive, geared to mountains of rote learning and resistant to innovative paradigms. Within that environment, if you’re not smart, you’re “stupid” and the school’s Maths teacher plainly regarded LD as being “stupid” and, therefore, not worthy of his attention. This is a prevalent attitude in Asia. I’m glad we pulled LD out of school because she would never have been correctly diagnosed in such a rigid learning environment. The thing that really bites though is, once she’s mastered a maths skill (whether it’s adding improper fractions, long division, rounding), she aces the tests. She takes real pride in being able to complete the questions accurately and quickly. Yet, two weeks later, and she’s lost it all, not even remembering what the long division symbol is supposed to look like.
So what are we doing about it? We’re trying several strategies, with several more waiting in the wings.
I’ve given LD her “back-up brain” (BUB for short). Because she likes the colour pink, it’s a big pink notebook. Every time we do something new in Maths, she has to explain it to herself in her BUB, using colouring pencils. At the front of the book are all the times tables, because I don’t think she should be forced to remember them AND whatever she’s learning.
J is buying more games for us to play as a family, so look out for reviews of Mille Bournes, Dixit, A La Carte, and others in the future. We also play mah-jongg (Malaysian rules) regularly. In this way, we’re hoping to stimulate LD’s maths sense through other paths in a fun, yet slightly competitive, way.
LD is learning violin (her choice of instrument) because there’s a strong link between maths and music. Again, we see this as a way of stimulating the neural pathways and boosting her self-confidence. And, speaking of self-confidence, both kids also take part in Wushu classes. (Wushu is like a martial arts ballet.)
Still on my list are neuro-sensory therapies, although it appears I inadvertently stumbled across part of them when instructing LD to write in her BUB with colouring pencils.
And lastly, in class, I use a smartboard (more on that in another post) and different colour pens to illustrate mathematical concepts. The kids love the technology and they laugh at Sausage (aka The Teacher’s Assistant) who dutifully watches every movement of the cursor projected onto the wall and barks if nothing moves for a few minutes. Anything that makes learning fun, even if it’s taking time out to watch Sausage chase the laser pen, is a plus in my book.
I am pained by LD’s difficulty. I love maths, I believe “God is Mathematics”, so this one bites particularly hard. But, with luck, effort and hard work, I’m hopeful that we’ll get through this.
UPDATE: I found a site called Learning Link Technologies and am exploring it at the moment to see if it’ll help. If anyone has any experiences with this site and their products, I’d be most grateful for some feedback.
I have also joined the Dyscalculia forum in an effort to find more things I can do to help LD with her difficulties. If you’re there as well, please say hi!
