Announcing 2 workshops for educators working with students with special needs on math. These are designed to be hands on, with immediately implementation and can be delivered to schoolwide or district wide audiences.
Identifying, writing, and monitoring progress for IEP math objectives that will support the entire year of math and that will allow all team members to track progress
Math instructional strategies that are designed to address challenges specific to ADHD, ASD (autism), and LD (learning disabilities)
If you are reading this post, it is likely that you have a student or you teach students who struggle with math. Here are suggestions to help your students prepare for the math they will encounter in the fall.
Review the IEP math objectives. Are they written to cover the entire curriculum or just a couple isolated math topics?
Ask for examples of what mastery looks like for the IEP math objectives. You may not understand the math but you can compare your student’s work with an example of mastery to get some idea if your student is showing some level of mastery.
Ask the teachers for practice on prerequisite skills for the math your student will encounter in the fall. Hire a college student or a tutor to work through these skills or use online resources.
Get a math evaluation to see where you student is in terms of the curriculum.
Many students are behind in their math education. This has long term implications. The sooner you can address the gaps, the better chance your student has for post-secondary success or competence with math.
To ensure the IEP team is on the same page as to what mastery of an objective looks like, the person writing the objective can take two steps:
provide an example problem that would be used to assess mastery (and the example problem would have the same language as used in the objective)
provide an example of a response to the example problem cited above that would be considered mastery level work
The graph below is not data. A graph is a representation of summary statistics. This summarizes the data.
The chart below does not show the actual prompts, e.g. what number was shown to Kate, but it does show the individual trials. This is data, with a summary statistics at the end of each row. Here is a link to more discussion about data, with an example of a data sheet I use.
The data shown below addresses the student’s effort to solve an equation. Problem 21 is checked as correct and the error in problem 22 is identified. I can use this data to identify where the student is struggling and how to help. NOTE: the math objective would use the same verb as the problem: solvethe linear equation.
The excerpt of a data sheet, shown below shows trials in a student’s effort to compare numbers.
Data below shows a student’s effort to evaluate integer expressions.
This applies to all areas beyond math. The chart above or the data sheet I linked above show data sheets that indicate the prompt and the results, with notes. For example, if I am asking my son to put on his shoes, each row of the data sheet is a trial with the outcome and notes.
