This Spring I spent 3 months helping a friend's dyslexic son, part time, prepare for his Maths GCSE (foundation level). It wasn't easy, he tried hard,and we all have our fingers crossed as his school has said he needs to pass to get into the 6th form.
Here's a list of key thoughts from our work together:
- he reads slowly from the blackboard
- he is easily distracted by random noises or movement
- he understandably finds 'wordy' maths questions harder (IMO they need different questions so they test kids' maths ability rather than English comprehension!)
- he has REAL problems understanding and calculating with negatives
- if the question has too many sub-parts he easily becomes confused (of course I would take him through questions step by step but it was hard for him)
- he hated questions with too many symbols, especially algebra, going on
- when he struggled with a topic it was very important to back off, have a break, then try something different (maybe not unusual)
- his self confidence went up and down easily
- he was a whizz at 3D shapes, transformation, and decent at most geometry questions
- as a diagnosed dyslexic he and his compatriots (about 15 of them out of 100 ...) were allowed the following in their exams: an extra 20 minutes for each paper; coloured pens for underlining key info if needed, a separate exam room (library)
In my opinion:
- most schools don't have the resources to help these kids enough, although his certainly tried
- it's so important to identify it early if possible
- it would have been better for him(and class mates) to be studying for Foundation level Maths GCSE for the two year course, rather than being switched to it when they did badly in their mocks in January
.
Bit of a brain dump, hope it helps.
Loads of info and advice available online, but everyone is different.
Here's a list of key thoughts from our work together:
- he reads slowly from the blackboard
- he is easily distracted by random noises or movement
- he understandably finds 'wordy' maths questions harder (IMO they need different questions so they test kids' maths ability rather than English comprehension!)
- he has REAL problems understanding and calculating with negatives
- if the question has too many sub-parts he easily becomes confused (of course I would take him through questions step by step but it was hard for him)
- he hated questions with too many symbols, especially algebra, going on
- when he struggled with a topic it was very important to back off, have a break, then try something different (maybe not unusual)
- his self confidence went up and down easily
- he was a whizz at 3D shapes, transformation, and decent at most geometry questions
- as a diagnosed dyslexic he and his compatriots (about 15 of them out of 100 ...) were allowed the following in their exams: an extra 20 minutes for each paper; coloured pens for underlining key info if needed, a separate exam room (library)
In my opinion:
- most schools don't have the resources to help these kids enough, although his certainly tried
- it's so important to identify it early if possible
- it would have been better for him(and class mates) to be studying for Foundation level Maths GCSE for the two year course, rather than being switched to it when they did badly in their mocks in January
![Man shrugging: medium-light skin tone :man_shrugging_tone2: 🤷🏼♂️](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/6.6/png/unicode/64/1f937-1f3fc-2642.png)
Bit of a brain dump, hope it helps.
Loads of info and advice available online, but everyone is different.
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