BY : SAMMY LAMBERT
Sharing Good Practice
Dyscalculia , dysgraphia , dyspraxia , dyslexia . As educators , we are great at identifying students who are struggling ; how much do we know about each of these additional learning needs ? Having taught for a few years , I thought I had finally found my stride , and I had become confident in my classroom . Sure , there were students who struggled with maths , but didn ’ t we all ? In a pick and mix choice of CPD for the coming term , I selected to work on my awareness of additional learning needs . I started with dyscalculia . Although it can be tricky to define dyscalculia , I found this definition helpful in my research ; “ A specific learning disorder in mathematics ( SLDM or developmental dyscalculia ) is a special case of persistent mathematics difficulties , where the problems with maths cannot be attributed to environmental factors or a general learning difficulty .” ( Morsanyi et al ., 2018 )
In my CPD time , I began devouring research on dyscalculia . The study by Morsanyi found that 6 % of children assessed experienced a specific difficulty in learning maths , but only 0.04 % had an official dyscalculia diagnosis . Although a relatively small study ( sample 2421 ), it made me wonder about the challenges my own students had been facing . My students were sitting GCSE maths , and attainment was varied . The majority of my teaching was spent with lower attainers , often lacking confidence , experiencing feelings of failure with maths . We had identified this as a department priority and spent a significant amount of time on mindsets and self-belief . We created a department-wide approach using Carol Dweck ’ s growth mindset principles . We created a culture where hard work paid off and fostered a thirst for learning from our students . Dweck ( 2017 ) recognises that faculty attitudes play a key part in cultivating growth mindsets too , and we were all on the same page .
Yet often , when the struggle in maths became challenging for my students , they simply gave up .
One of the biggest struggles my students then faced was how to pick themselves up and start again . That moment when they realised all their effort in problem-solving wasn ’ t going to deliver the correct answer or / because they couldn ’ t see the error they had made in step one . At that moment , holding a growth mindset was a challenge . We began looking at the barriers to trying again and found that talking through ideas helped students solidify or change their thinking . Sometimes that talk was all they needed to get back to work . We expanded this to include technology that typed student work as they spoke . Typically reserved for students who struggled to physically write their maths , we brought the technology to all students and gave them an opportunity to speak their maths . We had removed the barrier for students of knowing where to start or how to start again . That feeling of failure after writing answers , only to find it to be wrong , was lightened when it became a simple matter of deleting their narrated maths .
Yet some students still struggled . For
some , recalling facts was a particular challenge . Knowing the difference between calculating the area of a circle or the circumference of a circle or identifying whether a diagram had alternate and corresponding angles were recurring challenges . Dunlosky et al .’ s ( 2013 ) principles for effective learning found that students have improved achievement in testing when practice is distributed , little and often . From this , I began threading topics that relied heavily on the recall of facts throughout my lessons . Moving away from blocks or units of study to ensure we were building in time to practise , regularly , the recall of key facts . This , as a whole class approach , didn ' t just support those whom I had identified as experiencing specific difficulties in learning maths , it benefited all students . I like the analogy of a tennis player who doesn ’ t arrive at a grand slam having only practised the night before . For months , weeks and years , they have distributed their practice for peak performance .
Logical order and processing are core elements of maths , and students who may experience dyscalculia can find this a challenge . But the order of numbers , knowing that six is one more than 5 , is what we call
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