Re: Is Math success out of the question for students with ADD?

[Anonymous]

Funny story, I am currently student teaching in a grade 3/4 class and the one subject I am struggling with teaching? MATH! No surprises there, given this thread. My mentor teacher and I were banging our heads against our desks trying to figure out what worked until we finally hit on the right thing today.

I am teaching at a special needs school and the children need things very linear and step by step because of the nature of the disability these kids have. So my mentor teacher puts the math they are doing on the smartboard with the instructions and examples right there where they can see them. I was doing something different but when I started modelling my lessons after hers, where everything was laid out step by step for the students to see, suddenly it was so much easier for me to teach it! This wasn’t because I couldn’t conceptualize the math to explain it, nor was I having difficulty with computing. Having it laid out gave me an external cue as to where to go in my lesson so suddenly I had so much more working memory free to monitor the students and word things in a short and sweet manner that my students could follow.

My point is that perhaps having an exemplar to follow so you can focus on actual calculation instead of having to remember how to do the problem might help. It is so much easier to do a math problem when you can focus on doing the math instead of trying to remember what you are supposed to do next.

REPORT ABUSE