The office is well ventilated and spacious for private assessments allowing for 2m social distancing. A perspex screen is situated between the client and assessor. All surfaces are clutter free and wiped down with alcohol based anti-bacterial wipes regularly both during and between client appointments. Background information is collated prior to an assessment via the telephone and the home and school questionnaires.
What is Dyscalculia?
Dyscalculia explained
Developmental Dyscalculia, like dyslexia, is one of a family of specific learning difficulties.
Co-occurrence of learning difficulties (or disorders) appears to be the rule rather than the exception, and it can often occur with one or more conditions such as dyslexia, dyspraxia or ADHD/ADD.
Although this may be as a result of sharing characteristic factors such as working memory, research is ongoing into the likely interaction between any individual’s cognitive, biological and environmental factors.
What all definitions have in common is
- a presence of difficulties in mathematics
- the mathematical difficulties are not caused by lack of educational opportunities
- the degree of difficulty is evidenced to be below expectations for the individual’s age.
How common is it?
Dyscalculia is under studied and under resourced in comparison with dyslexia. However, it is estimated that dyscalculia is likely to occur in 3% – 6% of the population, and, unlike some other specific learning difficulties, is as likely to affect females as males.
Checklists
Primary School
Typical symptoms include:
- Has difficulty learning and recalling basic number facts 6 + 4 = 10.
- Still uses fingers to count instead of using more advanced strategies (like mental maths)
- Poor understanding of the signs +, -, xx and x or may confuse these mathematical symbols
- Struggles to recognise that 3 + 5 is the same as 5 + 3 or may not be able to solve 3 + 26 ‒ 26 without calculating
- Has trouble with place value, often putting numbers in the wrong column.
- May not understand maths language or be able to devise a plan to solve a maths problem.
- Finds it difficult to understand maths phrases like greater than and less than
- Has trouble keeping score in sports or games
- Has difficulty working out the total cost of items and can run out of money
- May avoid situations that require understanding numbers, like playing games that involve maths.
Secondary School
Typical symptoms include:
- Struggles to understand information on charts and graphs.
- Has trouble finding different approaches to the same maths problem, such as adding the length and width of a rectangle and doubling the answer to solve for the perimeter (rather than adding all the sides).
- Struggles to learn and understand reasoning methods and multi-step calculation procedures
- Has trouble measuring items like ingredients in a simple recipe or liquids in a bottle.
- Lacks confidence in activities that require understanding speed, distance and directions, and may get lost easily.
- Has trouble applying maths concepts to money, such as calculating the exact change.
Adults
Typical symptoms include:
- difficulty counting backwards
- difficulty remembering ‘basic’ facts
- slow to perform calculations
- weak mental arithmetic skills
- a poor sense of numbers & estimation
- Difficulty in understanding place value
- Addition is often the default operation
- High levels of mathematics anxiety
Watch the video to hear the nature of the difficulties experienced by children with Dyscalculia in the classroom
The nature of Dyscalculia – click here
What is Dyslexia?
Signs of dyslexia (Primary school age)
If a child appears to be struggling with spelling, reading, writing or numeracy, how do you know whether these difficulties are potential indications of dyslexia?
There are some obvious signs such as a ‘spiky’ profile which means that a child has areas of strong ability alongside areas of weakness. You may also have other family members with similar weaknesses. Remember that not all dyslexic children will display the same weaknesses and abilities.
General signs to look for are:
- Speed of processing: slow spoken and/or written language
- Poor concentration
- Difficulty following instructions
- Forgetting words
Written work
- Poor standard of written work compared with oral ability
- Produces messy work with many crossings out and words tried several times, e.g. wippe, wype, wiep, wipe
- Confused by letters which look similar, particularly b/d, p/g, p/q, n/u, m/w
- Poor handwriting with many ‘reversals’ and badly formed letters
- Spells a word several different ways in one piece of writing
- Makes anagrams of words, e.g. tired for tried, bread for beard
- Produces badly set-out written work, doesn’t stay close to the margin
- Poor pencil grip
- Produces phonetic and bizarre spelling: not age/ability appropriate
- Uses unusual sequencing of letters or words
Reading
- Slow reading progress
- Finds it difficult to blend letters together
- Has difficulty in establishing syllable division or knowing the beginnings and endings of words
- Unusual pronunciation of words
- No expression in reading, and poor comprehension
- Hesitant and laboured reading, especially when reading aloud
- Misses out words when reading, or adds extra words
- Fails to recognise familiar words
- Loses the point of a story being read or written
- Has difficulty in picking out the most important points from a passage
Numeracy
- Confusion with place value e.g. units, tens, hundreds
- Confused by symbols such as + and x signs
- Difficulty remembering anything in a sequential order, e.g. tables, days of the week, the alphabet
Time
- Has difficulty learning to tell the time
- Poor time keeping
- Poor personal organisation
- Difficulty remembering what day of the week it is, their birth date, seasons of the year, months of the year
- Difficulty with concepts – yesterday, today, tomorrow
Skills
- Poor motor skills, leading to weaknesses in speed, control and accuracy of the pencil
- Limited understanding of non verbal communication
- Confused by the difference between left and right, up and down, east and west
- Indeterminate hand preference
- Performs unevenly from day to day
Behaviour
- Uses work avoidance tactics, such as sharpening pencils and looking for books
- Seems ‘dreamy’, does not seem to listen
- Easily distracted
- Is the class clown or is disruptive or withdrawn
- Is excessively tired due to amount of concentration and effort required
Signs of dyslexia (Secondary school age)
Written work
- Has a poor standard of written work compared with oral ability
- Has poor handwriting with badly formed letters or has neat handwriting, but writes very slowly
- Produces badly set out or messy written work, with spellings crossed out several times
- Spells the same word differently in one piece of work
- Has difficulty with punctuation and/or grammar
- Confuses upper and lower case letters
- Writes a great deal but ‘loses the thread’
- Writes very little, but to the point
- Has difficulty taking notes in lessons
- Has difficulty with organisation of homework
- Finds tasks difficult to complete on time
- Appears to know more than they can commit to paper
Reading
- Is hesitant and laboured, especially when reading aloud
- Omits, repeats or adds extra words
- Reads at a reasonable rate, but has a low level of comprehension
- Fails to recognise familiar words
- Misses a line or repeats the same line twice
- Loses their place easily/uses a finger or marker to keep the place
- Has difficulty in pin-pointing the main idea in a passage
- Has difficulty using dictionaries, directories, encyclopaedias
Numeracy
- Has difficulty remembering tables and/or basic number sets
- Finds sequencing problematic
- Confuses signs such as x for +
- Can think at a high level in mathematics, but needs a calculator for simple calculations
- Misreads questions that include words
- Finds mental arithmetic at speed very difficult
- Finds memorising formulae difficult
Other areas
- Confuses direction – left/right
- Has difficulty in learning foreign languages
- Has indeterminate hand preference
- Has difficulty in finding the name for an object
- Has clear difficulties processing information at speed
- Misunderstands complicated questions
- Finds holding a list of instructions in memory difficult, although can perform all tasks when told individually
Behaviour
- Is disorganised or forgetful e.g. over sports equipment, lessons, homework, appointments
- Is immature and/or clumsy
- Has difficulty relating to others; is unable to ‘read’ body language
- Is often in the wrong place at the wrong time
- Is excessively tired, due to the amount of concentration and effort required
A cluster of these indicators alongside areas of ability may point to possible dyslexia and further investigation is recommended.
Dyslexia explained in a five minute video.
What is Dyslexia explained – click here
Further Information to support schools and parents with understanding the nature of dyslexia
Understanding Dyslexia and Literacy difficulties – click here
How to help support your child’s working Memory
Supporting Working Memory At a Glance
Working memory refers to how we hold on to and work with information stored in short-term memory
Children use working memory to learn and follow instructions
You can build working memory games into your child’s daily life
- Work on visualisation skills
- Have your child teach you – verbalisation helps embed new learning
- Try games that use visual memory
- Play cards – Matching pairs, UNO and Fish
- Encourage active reading
- chunk information into smaller bites
- Make it multi sensory
- Help make connections
Want to find out more, click on the link below
Click here for 8 Working Memory boosters
Assessments during Home Schooling
Home schooling has been happening in most households in the UK since schools had to close to the majority of students on March 20th 2020.
Whilst working with their children some parents have seen first hand the difficulties their children face in the classroom on a daily basis. If you are struggling to know how to make a positive impact and would like an assessment to identify barriers to your child’s learning, please get in touch.
A number of parents have made that move and their children have accessed a ‘socially distanced’ assessment which has made a difference. A wonderful quote from a child aged 8 who was assessed last week –
“Morning Sarah-Jane, we are all great, **** is doing super, it’s amazing the difference in him since you came. He has started to read again and he seems so much happier in himself. He is smiling and we have not had any frustrations at all. It’s as if he has had a massive weight lifted off his shoulders. He asked to read that night and he said…..” I cant believe Sarah-Jane has helped me read, I can do it mummy” Thank you so much! 8th June 2020