Math Is Not Rocket Science

I get daily Google News Alerts emailed to me about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Haiti, Adoption and Homeschool. In February, I got notice of a new blog post Math A Problem for Alcohol-Damaged Children. This entry is a word-for-word republishing of a press release dated December 2006, Numbers, sequences pose problems for Fetal Alcohol Syndrome children. Dr. Carmen Rasmussen was reporting the findings of a descriptive research study done after observing 50 children diagnosed with FASD that found that children with FASD can’t do math. I hope the researcher wasn’t paid a lot for this research. Anyone parenting a child with FASD already knows our kids can’t do math. Math is our biggest homeschool challenge.

I have mentioned my daughter’s math problems before. Math is the subject that brings whines and arguments. Why my daughter will even volunteer to clean her room if she thinks she will be able to get out of or even postpone doing math.  I didn’t have to homeschool my daughter to learn about her math problem; they were glaringly obvious even when she was in public school. Marissa rarely cries. So, I was surprised when I found her in tears one day. I asked her why she was crying, “Dad said I can’t just do my math, I have to understand it!”

“You do not have to understand math. You can balance your checkbook on Quicken and still move out!”

Marissa was only about 10 at the time so she thought that was pretty funny. 

Another night I spent hours reteaching her how to add and subtract decimals. She hadn’t gotten the concept in class. I made graph paper using MS word. I taught her how to use the graph paper to line up her decimals and then fill in the numbers before and after the decimal. I bet she did 25 problems before she could do one problem without me prompting, “What is the next step? Have you lined up your decimal points?” The next night, she brought home math problems asking that she add and subtract money. Score! It is exactly the same skill. Homework was going to be easy! Until — “I can’t do money.”

“What do you mean you can’t do money? This is the same thing we did last night, line up your decimals.”

“I can’t do money.”

And, we started over. I made graph paper using MS word and taught her how to line up her decimals and then fill in the numbers before and after the decimal. When she took her quiz in school, she failed. She lined up the dollar signs instead of the decimal points.

“Knowing this would help in classrooms with FASD children,” said Rasmussen. The typical teaching rate may be too rapid for children with FASD, resulting in large amounts of missed information, she said. “The study definitely has implications for treatment and education down the road.”

This statement assumes that there is merely a quantative difference in how my daughter learns; she just needs more time. In truth, her learning difference is qualitative. She needs to be taught differently. She doesn’t learn foundational skills and apply them to the next thing. She views every new math skill as a brand new skill that has to be taught step-by-step. She has not mastered mathematical reasoning; she doesn’t have any idea why she is doing any step. It is hard for her to access the memory that stores the list of steps. Some days, she accesses the list easily. Other days, she cannot find her mental checklist. She doesn’t know how to do the problem, even if she knew how yesterday. At this point a wise teacher either reteaches or moves on to History, English or cooking.

At home we mostly do life skills math and I try to find a way to teach her that only has a few steps. Shorter, less complicated lists are easier to remember. I am not overly concerned with mathematical reasoning. Recently, Marissa has learned to calculate tips!

Here is how she does it. First, she rounds the bill to the nearest number that goes into 5. Then she counts on her fingers while step counting by 5’s until she gets to that number. She has just calculated a 20% tip. For example, if her bill is $18.75, she would round it to $20. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty… it took 4 steps to get to $20. So, she has to leave a $4 tip. She has not mastered percentages; she doesn’t understand moving the decimal to divide by 10’s and then doubling that. But she did take me to lunch, calculate the tip and totaled her bill. Besides, she paid for both of our lunches with her own money. Yeah, Marissa! She has remembered this method for months. Usually, I have to pay though.

April Fool’s is a part of Home Education Week!
Check Dana’s blog for links to other homeschooler’s stories!