Practical Access Podcast

S12 E10: Cracking the Code of Dyscalculia: Practical Tips for Teachers and Families

• Season 12 • Episode 10

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In this episode of Practical Access, hosts Lisa Dieker and Rebecca Hines welcome Dr. Honora Wall, an expert on dyscalculia, a math-related learning disability. Dr. Wall, founder of the Dyscalculia Training Research Institute (DTRI), sheds light on the unique challenges faced by individuals with dyscalculia, offering practical strategies for teachers and families to better support students struggling with math.

Key takeaways include:

  • Understanding Dyscalculia: Dr. Wall explains how dyscalculia differs from dyslexia and other neurodivergent traits, emphasizing that it's not a deficiency but a difference in brain wiring.
  • Practical Classroom Strategies: Tips for identifying early signs, using real-time feedback, and incorporating supportive tools like visual aids and step-by-step guides to make math less intimidating.
  • Reducing Math Anxiety: Families can focus on fun, low-pressure math activities like puzzles, card games, or discussions about tempo in music to create positive associations with math.
  • Empowering Students: Dr. Wall highlights the importance of fostering a supportive, judgment-free environment where mistakes are viewed as opportunities for growth.

Whether you're an educator or a parent, this episode offers valuable advice to help students overcome barriers and thrive.

We love to hear from our listeners! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. We look forward to receiving your questions on our Twitter (@Accesspractical) or Instagram (@Practical_Access). 

Resources:

The Dyscalculia Training Research Institute (DTRI) Website: https://www.thedtri.org/

Teaching Students with Dyscalculia: https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Students-Dyscalculia-Honora-Wall/dp/1732760160

Honora Wall’s Podcast, What in the World is Dyscalculia: https://rss.com/podcasts/dyscalculia/

Honora Wall’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqXKkHFgVlACI_NqM2J34pg 

Unknown:

Music.

Lisa Dieker:

Welcome to Practical Access. I'm Lisa Dieker.

Rebecca Hines:

And I'm Rebecca Hines and Lisa, I'm so excited about today's guest because the topic is one that is so precise and so under. Talked about, who do we have?

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah, so we're excited to have with us today. And welcome Dr. Honora Wall, who is a speaker, author, teacher and trainer in a topic that we have to all practice saying, which is dyscalculia for those who and again, we hear it in lots of different ways, but it's really map disabilities in short. So welcome Dr. Honora Wall, and excited to have you with us.

Honora Wall:

Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. I love talking about this, so it's such an important topic. Thanks for bringing awareness.

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah, so I'm going to kick it off with the first question. I happen to be a parent of a kid with a disability and has Tourettes and dyslexia. This is one that we didn't have in our bucket, but oftentimes the literacy piece gets in the way of the math piece. And so help us understand the difference in kids who have language based problems versus who have math problems, and how may teachers think about that in their teaching, especially in math.

Honora Wall:

Yeah, it's such an interesting trajectory. So both dyslexia and dyscalculia came about in the research in the same time, about the 1930s but reading really took off as a national interest where math did not. So a lot of teachers feel like this is a brand new thing. We just made up, and now we're calling it a math learning disability, but it's not new. It's just new to us. And I think that's an important difference. And you might know, you probably have already seen this with your child, that anything neurodivergent, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, Tourettes, ADHD, autism spectrum, there's a lot of crossover, and it's almost like I see these individual neuro divergent pieces, like a water color, and then they have places where they blend. So that's a really interesting thing to see in people who are neuro divergent, which, for the you know, quick definition is just a different way of thinking, different brain wiring, not a deficiency, just a difference. And what you see with the difference between math and dyslexia, there's a couple of key ones. The one is the area in the brain where they both happen. And I won't go too far down the neurology rabbit hole, although I love talking about the brain, but those happen in different parts of the brain, and they express differently. So the reading piece that we're very familiar with is students struggling with letters, struggling with reading fluency, and then later struggling to get conceptual understanding from printed text. It doesn't create the same mental images that it would for a person who's not dyslexic, what we see with dyscalculia is just a real uncomfortable space for numbers. What do they mean? What do quantities mean? Time, money and place value never make any sense. And that fluency we're looking for doing any kind of mental math, which is a total parlor trick. Please quit holding it up as the gold standard, everyone. But the idea of doing that mental math is near impossible for a lot of people, and very intimidating.

Rebecca Hines:

You know, I love the watercolor example in math. I know that a lot of teachers, you mentioned how the two areas grew together, and we really only focused on the reading side. In language arts, can you break down a little bit for us to understand, if I'm a teacher, what would be some of the early signs of dyscalculia?

Honora Wall:

Or dyscalculia, dyscalcia that people come up with anything. Some of your early signs can happen as young as first and second grade. And of course, at that time, we're still waiting for human development. Everyone progresses at different times. So we don't really start looking for learning disabilities until third or fourth. But what you're going to see is students who are intelligent, sometimes highly, highly intelligent, and we think they should be able to get this stuff quickly. And we teach a lesson on Monday, the student is kind of with us on Tuesday, by Wednesday, they're not sure what we're talking about. And by the Friday test, they don't think they've ever seen this information before. And the other key thing for dyscalculia is we will keep repeating especially those basic facts, because your brain loses them like water through a colander if you have dyscalculia, but we drill those basic facts, and they're just not sticking, even if the student seems to get them on on day one, it's just gone by day three. And that really impacts their ability to finish assessments the way we want them to and in the amount of time we give them. But you can see it at very young ages.

Rebecca Hines:

So, so in describing this, it sounds a lot like how dyslexia might present with those early spelling tests. Would you say that's a fair description?

Honora Wall:

Yes, yes. You will have a student who knows the vocab, and they're working on their spelling all week, and then they sit down to take that spelling test, and you think, wow, was was that phonetic? Where did that come from? And you're surprised, because the assessment does not match what you expect based on capabilities. And the same that same thing will happen with math.

Lisa Dieker:

Great, yeah, and I knew Honora one of the problems in math is that, and with a learning disability is it's a system of failure, so I have to fail in math long enough before you diagnose me. And now I'm frustrated. And is it, you know? Now, is it attention? Is it behavior? Is it math? And so I'm curious, you know, for your thoughts about, like, my favorite in working in this area is that, you know, fractions, every kid does poorly in fractions, like, like, it's just part of development. Yet, what does that kid look so different? And how might I lower their anxiety, increase their success, maybe before they get identified, even though I smell it in second grade or third grade, and yet they haven't failed long enough. What would be some things you might suggest I do to build that bridge to get that kid past everything? Because it's not just fractions are going to fail at. They're going to fail at everything.

Honora Wall:

Yeah, Lisa, I have so many tangents I want to go off, but I'm going to try to throw them out and click and get back to answering the question. The first is, maybe we'd be better at fractions if we quit trying to squish algebra into fourth grade. But I'll let that one go, and my other one is that, yes, a lot of people do struggle with fractions, so maybe we need to look at that piece and give some extra support to all students. Let them have a multiplication list, not the chart, the old fashioned times tables in front of them, that way they can look up the numbers you need them to look up for the numeracy piece while they're focusing on the conceptual part or the algorithm part. There's nothing wrong with just following the algorithm. Steps and procedures are how you get it done. And for neurodivergent students, if we can help them get it done, then they're much more interested in having a conceptual conversation with us, but the reverse is not true from from my experience, but let's just give them some extra support. You know, I've been making banana bread for probably 30 years or more, and I'm still going to open up the recipe book and just make sure I've got the right amount of flour and the right amount of butter, I'm going to give myself that support because I want my bread to taste good once I've baked it. So I feel like we remove support on our timeline, not on the students timeline, and that is an easy, easy fix for any teacher. You don't have to buy anything, you don't have to change anything. You don't have to replace your program. Just give a little extra support. Let the student move away from it as they are comfortable.

Rebecca Hines:

And I love that. I love your analogy, and also this focus on, you know when things are appropriate. And along those lines, I know that you have examined before this idea, this idea of the importance of real-time feedback. So can you explain the importance of that feedback and the proximity of the feedback to the actual event, so that our audience can understand how this impacts kids?

Honora Wall:

Oh, yeah, that is such an interesting part about brain research too. We know that, like our brain at all times, all day, without us being aware of it will make a prediction, and then it wants confirmation. And if we predict something and we are right, we strengthen those neurological connections. And if we predict something and we're wrong, we weaken them. If we get no feedback right or wrong, then what do we do with those neurons that just kind of float out there, they're not really coupled with with dendrites, that means we're not remembering it and we're not recalling it later. So instant feedback is really helpful, and I think that's another easy thing teachers can do. Is when you're with the student at a desk and you're letting them do the work, see what's going on, and then just tell them, hey, you added here. I actually want you to multiply at that step. Let's do another one. Good. You multiplied, perfect. And now you can walk away from the desk, but you told them exactly what they did wrong and exactly how to fix it. Now you're strengthening that connection. You're giving them mastery. They can now practice to increase mastery, and they know what you want from them. I think a lot of times we act like math is this big secret, and you either know it or you don't, you're in the club, or you're not allowed in the club at all, and honestly, it's just math.

Rebecca Hines:

Oh, the famous, famous last words, somebody who loves math. So Honora my, my final question to you is just a follow up of what you were just mentioning, and that idea of this feedback. And I so love your explanation about how the brain is a big part of this. Can you give us an example of how a teacher might in flight, you know, arrange a learning setting that gives them a chance to give that immediate feedback? Because I feel like that's for a lot of teachers. There's such a gap between even, you know, homework and other things, and by the time somebody gives the feedback, so many other thoughts have been run through the mind that that's feels long forgotten. You know, they no longer associate their performance with the feedback. So in a math class, how can that look on a practical level?

Honora Wall:

Yeah, that is a great question, Rebecca, and I feel like you're completely correct, the more time that goes by, the less the brain is interested that was yesterday or two days ago, and it has no relevance, so that later, feedback is not going to create the same kind of prediction response that we really want. And I do think that for teachers and 20 year classroom teacher, I completely get the struggles of managing the entire class. I think we would get farther faster if we would just talk to children, and we really don't, we really don't. If we could just say to people, okay, we're going to go over the homework. Maybe we could quit assigning homework. We have no intention of grading fully and let go of those completion grades. But there's another soapbox I will lead to the side to say to people, okay, who added here when they should have subtracted, or just, you know, hands up. Yeah, that one is common. Okay, this is how you know you're going to have to subtract in this thing, and then you are really addressing it with the whole group, and not sending any one individual student out for that exposure in front of their peers. Another way you could do it in the classroom is just take those few kids who keep having problems with a certain topic or assessment and either in a small group or individual setting, analyze their work with them, and say, okay, I noticed right here you wrote out this step. But take a look at your I'll use fractions. Take a look at your denominators. They're not the same number. And as you say, that circle the denominators at the bottom. So you're really coding the vocab, the placement in the fraction and the visual of what the student is looking at, so they really know what you're talking about, and then just point that out to them what they need to do differently. But it doesn't have to be very long. It doesn't have to be intensive. It can be very casual, and the more we make it casual and friendly, the more we're addressing the social, emotional piece, because the trauma that's involved in low math performance is real, valid and sustained.

Lisa Dieker:

And so my last question is going to talk about that trauma being cyclical in some cases. So you know, mom or dad comes home and has math to do, and you'll hear, I'm not a math person. Or my favorite was a true example where someone said, Look, when I grew up six times six was just 36 why it was I don't know, and I don't care, and I don't know why my kid has to write that. And so, so math has changed. Math, math anxiety, we know is, I think 72% of the population is assessed with some level of math anxiety, if you look at the research. So what do you what do you do to help families understand, especially kids who have a disability in math, to get them to practice and understand the importance of doing some skill work over the summer, on the weekends, on the car ride? How do you kind of coach people to go in that direction in the work that you do?

Honora Wall:

When I'm working with a student directly, I will tell parents, you know, you will save a lot of money if you don't help. You will need me less if you quit helping, because then I don't have to fix, you know, the extra issues that can come in from some very well meaning parents who want to help, and I do want parents to be involved personally, especially when it comes to summertime and that idea of skill building. I want everybody to take a step back. I want everybody to relax a little bit, and I'd rather you just had some fun as a family. That's going to go a lot farther than any workbook you're going to do or drilling any of those facts. And you can put math into a lot of things, and it doesn't all have to be the numeracy piece, especially because for dyscalculia, steps and procedures can be difficult. So a lot of people with dyscalculia don't like board games. They can't really keep up with all the rules they have to follow, and then it's intimidating and it's a negative experience, and then their parents are mad because they couldn't play the game very well, and we're not getting where we want to get to from there, but we can talk about math and music, and it doesn't have to be the really, did you know that math is involved? Nobody has ever wanted to hear that from a parent ever. Just listen to some different types of music and talk about the tempo being fast or slow, and then the student has that prior knowledge. When it does come up in a classroom discussion of fractions, their brain will make the connection on its own. Make some puzzles together, play some low key games as a family, and make a tactile make it something you actually sit down together and play Blackjack, play Go Fish, play something that's very seemingly basic, because we don't have to build the entire coliseum. We just need to build a little bit of a foundation, and really that foundation should have the strong, positive, emotional piece that's going to get your kids through later math classes.

Lisa Dieker:

Great. I love it. Well, thank you for such wonderful, practical brain focused list goes on and on, extraordinary information for our listeners, and if you have questions, please send us a Tweet @Access Practical or post a question for us on our Facebook page @Practical Access. Thank you again Honora, some really great advice for families and teachers. Thanks.

Honora Wall:

Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it.