- Can’t do math in their heads and write
down even simple problems.
- Have difficulty making change.
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- Build in real-life manipulatives to do basic math problems.
- Provide learners with strategies to make change.
- Practise with real money, writing down the problems and responses as they
are completed.
- Use a multi-sensory approach.
- Show that math problems can be approached in many different ways, for
example by adding or subtracting.
- Try to teach as many ways as possible of solving a given type of problem, so
that if they forget one way, they will have an alternative. For example, 3 x 4=
2 x 4 + 4.
- A game-oriented approach to learning facts may be productive. For
example, using number cards or dice, pick a sum (addition) or a product
(multiplication) and see how many different cards or dice can be used to
create that answer.
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- Confuse math symbols.
- Misread numbers.
- Don’t interpret graphs or tables
accurately.
- May make careless mistakes in written
work.
- Have trouble maintaining a cheque book.
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- Help learners become aware of this challenge.
- Encourage review of work and double-checking of information.
- Practise tracing numbers they reverse or misread.
- Build in self-monitoring strategies.
- Encourage the learners to circle the calculation symbols. In most cases,
learners understand the concepts but make mistakes with their calculations.
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- Leave out steps in math problem solving
and do them in the wrong order.
- Cannot do long division except with a
calculator.
- Have trouble budgeting.
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- Teach problem-solving steps to use with each math problem: read and
understand the problem; look for the key questions and recognize the
important words; select the appropriate operation; write the equation and
solve it.
- Help learners chunk the information into smaller units.
- Use mnemonics for long division to help remember the steps.
- Model manipulation so that learners understand that math problems can be
looked at in a number of ways.
- Use real-life situations to understand the meaning.
- Continually model that concrete materials can be moved, held and physically
grouped and separated – this provides more vivid teaching tools than a
pictorial diagram or grouping.
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- Don’t translate real-life problems into the
appropriate mathematical processes.
- Avoid employment situations that involve
this set of skills.
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- Practise what operations are needed and have learners make up their own
word problems from number statements. This helps learners to understand
how the language is structured.
- Highlight key words, numbers and/or calculations.
- Alter instruction, i.e. give the answers and allow learners to explain how the
answer was obtained.
- Help learners with auditory disabilities visualize the word problem, i.e. if the
problem mentions two cars at different prices, have them draw the cars with
the prices.
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