As a parent who spent many hours searching for straightforward mathematics resources for dyslexic students, I know how difficult this search can be.
Thankfully, proven Structured Literacy programs and approaches exist for teaching reading and spelling to struggling readers and writers, yet math programs are few and hard to find amongst the misleading marketing of many for-profit publishing companies that may not have the best interests, or even a full understanding, of what dyslexic students need.
I have found curricula based on the multi-sensory Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract approach to be effective for teaching math to my children and students. Some programs I use with my students and recommend to parents who want to tutor their own children are Ronit Bird’s books/e-books, The Dyscalculia Solution book, and Singapore Math.
Most dyslexic/dyscalculiac students have not received enough instruction with concrete materials and teaching methods, and this is the first step to developing a strong understanding of fundamental concepts of numeracy. Ronit Bird’s print books and e-books and The Dyscalculia Solution offer an excellent path for parents and teachers to follow to give students a solid, concrete, understanding before moving onto abstract paper work.
The Singapore Math curriculum provides a highly visual and methodical approach to thinking about math and solving word problems and is based on research using Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract teaching methods. The textbooks and workbooks are affordable and easy to order online.
For students aged 7+ who cannot easily add 4+6, 3+5, 2+7, 3+4, 2+5, etc., in their head and without using their fingers or drawing dots and counting in ones, I recommend starting with Ronit Bird’s “Exploring Numbers Through Dot Patterns” e-book ($9.99) and Singapore Math Dimensions KB Workbook ($12.00), no matter their current age or grade level.
At least 80% of the curriculum in Ronit Bird’s books and The Dyscalculia Solution book are games and hands-on concrete activities! Yes, games. This makes tutoring sessions for students usually frustrated and confused by math much more enjoyable than traditional math classroom work. And guess what? They learn more, faster, by playing games than by just listening to a lecture and doing worksheets. The kinesthetic, auditory, and visual skills used in games and strategy-building create more neural connections than filling out multiple worksheets. Play = Learning.
Although math resources are available for dyslexic students, and not cost prohibitive for most families, parents do need to invest several hours a week to:
- train themselves to learn the activities, games, and methods;
- prepare manipulatives and game pieces;
- conduct tutoring sessions (recommend at least 2-3 hours per week);
- prepare lesson plans;
- and keep track of students’ progress.
Often this is not easily accomplished due to work schedules, lack of time, or the common challenge of not only being an overwhelmed parent, but now also having to be a teacher to a child who is already frustrated and may be resistant to more help from parents. This is where private tutoring can be helpful and kickstart your child’s understanding, and eventual love of math.
Yes, I am shocked and pleased to say that my kids and students sometimes say “I love math!” after tutoring sessions….and this was not something they ever said after a day of school. Of course, we still have days where the love of math is not apparent, and this often coincides with long division – which I can understand as this is one of the hardest math tasks for dyslexic students.
I have learned as a parent and a tutor, that when students are taught math concretely and at their pace, they begin to understand math, and they develop a love for math.
“In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we are taught.” – Baba Dioum
If your child shows signs of dyslexia or dyscalculia, Understood.org created an excellent resource for parents to ask targeted questions about the school’s math curriculum – perfect for bringing to your next IEP or 504 Plan meeting or when talking with their math teacher. Here is a list of common math accommodations for dyslexic/dyscalculic students.
“The way that the dyslexic brain works is not bad, it isn’t wrong, and it isn’t deficient. It’s just different. And the difference is not a disability. In fact, the differences in a dyslexic brain bring with it many advantages that go unrecognized and are often mislabeled and even maligned.” – Madalyne Hymas, graphic designer, speaking on The Dyslexic Advantage
According to Understood.org, a non-profit alliance to support parents and teachers working with learning disabilities, “As you’re investigating math intervention programs, here are some features to look for:
- Multi-sensory
- Data driven
- Direct connection between previously learned and new material
- Immediate feedback
The above elements are missing from the “Common Core” curricula. “Common Core” curriculum disfavors direct instruction (source), so immediate feedback and multi-sensory activities are severely lacking. These important elements are included in authentic “Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract” mathematics curricula such as Singapore Math and Ronit Bird’s books.
Games, games, and more games…not many students can resist playing with all these multi-sensory math manipulatives and don’t realize how quickly they are learning mental math while caught up in a competitive and playful spirit.
Here is an informative article about how dyslexia and dyscalculia affect mathematical abilities, some suggested accommodations, and additional teaching resources from the Australian Dyslexia Association.
Below is a video about how I teach students addition and subtraction within 20 and how I introduce the “bridging through 10,” method which they will learn to use with much larger numbers as they progress. I also discuss math anxiety and some of the strategies I use to help alleviate math anxiety and replace anxiety with new skills and new habits.
This webinar recording from Lord Math is an excellent introduction to the neuroscience of numeracy and teaching fundamental beginning math concepts in a multi-sensory way:
Multi-sensory Math Training and Teaching Resources
| Multi-sensory Math Training and Teaching Resources | Cost* |
| What Works Clearinghouse Assisting Students Struggling with Mathematics: Response to Intervention (RtI) for Elementary and Middle Schools | Free |
| Helping Children MasterMultiplication Facts in a Meaningful Way, by Amanda Ruch and Gina Kling NCTM Annual MeetingApril 16, 2015 | Free |
| ‘Numeracy Assessments and Interventions for Elementary and Intermediate Grades’ created by the Georgia Department of Education and the The New Zealand Ministry of Education | Free |
| Multi-sensory math webinar recordings for educators from Lord Math | Free |
| IDA Dyslexia Webinar: “Building the Math Muscle” by Marilyn Zecher | Free |
| Ronit Bird’s youtube videos and Card Games and Dice and Domino Games ebooks | Free |
| Woodin Math curriculum bank and videos. Common Core aligned multisensory resources by grade level and a targeted numeracy program Woodin Math Primary Numeracy Stages 1-5 | Free |
| Made for Math website “Learn” resources | Free |
| Steve Chinn’s “Maths Explained” videos (short videos and worksheets by specific math topic) | $ ($2 – $10) |
| Ronit Bird’s print books and ebooks (games, activities, and demo videos) | $$ ($10 – $40) |
| “The Dyscalculia Solution” print book (fully-scripted multisensory math activities) | $$ ($50) |
| “The Dyscalculia Assessment” print book and printables for assessing students before beginning tutoring | $$ ($50) |
| Singapore Math Dimensions Curriculum (K-5 comprehensive multisensory curriculum for school and homeschool. Teacher Guides (with concrete manipulative activities/lessons), Textbooks, Workbooks, and Tests) | $$ ($12 per text and workbook per level. Teacher’s guides and test books cost extra) |
| RightStart Mathematics Curriculum (Comprehensive fully-scripted multi-sensory numeracy curriculum for homeschool or intervention tutoring). This program is abacus-based and includes kits to purchase manipulatives and card games. | $$-$$$ (teacher guide workbooks, and manipulative kits) |
| ‘Decoding Math’ online courses by Lord Math | $$$ ($275-$450) |
| Dr. Anneke Schreuder’s Dyscalculia Tutor Training online self-study-paced videos and textbook study (watch promo) | $$$ ($585 for K-5 topics) |
| Marilyn Zecher’s online workshop and presentation recordings (create a ‘Teachable’ account to view) | $ – $$$ ($10 – $400 for math topics K-12) |
| Marilyn Zecher’s ASDEC multisensory math I course | $$$$ ($925 for K-5 topics) |
| Making Math Real training and program materials | $$$$$ ($5,300 for K-5 topics) |
What methods don’t work well for teaching math to students with dyslexia/dyscalculia?
Now that I’ve shared what does work for dyslexic students in my experience, I would like to caution parents about a method that may not work in the long-term for dyslexic students and may actually stunt their mathematical intelligence, and is unfortunately a common curriculum used in Special Education classrooms throughout the country: Touch Math™.
Several years ago, when I began researching math teaching methods specific for dyslexia and dyscalculia to try and help my sons with their math homework, “Touch Math” was one method that came up often in my Google searches. I watched videos and read about the technique, but was not convinced that this method would help my children understand complex mathematical concepts and calculations in a “whole-to-part” instructional rubric that dyslexic students need for full understanding. I have learned that “Touch Math™,” in fact, was developed for, and is appropriate for, intellectually-disabled and cognitively-challenged individuals, not for students with dyslexia and dyscalculia who have normal or above average IQs.
I don’t believe Touch Math™ is an appropriate method for teaching math to students with dyslexia/dyscalculia because it restricts students to “counting in ones” and that is the first advice Ronit Bird gives to parents and teachers: free your students from having to rely on “counting in ones’ and give them a broad number sense and multiple calculation strategies to draw from.
“Why is Touch Math™ harmful?
Although it is certainly true that students who use the touch point system arrive at accurate answers quickly, the use of Touch Math™ and it underlying philosophy goes completely counter to the vision of the NCTM Principles and Standards for School Mathematics.It is an artificial program, which encourages rote, mindless, “pencil tapping”. The method forces students to think of numbers as discrete units, and, as a result, it inhibits understanding of place value concepts. It is rule bound, and teacher led. There are no strategies taught – only rules remembered. In this sense, it is a giant leap backward and puts the student, says Bob Wright of Southern Cross University, founder of Math Recovery, “on the path to nowhere. Touch Math™ forces the child to solve addition and subtraction problems by counting on or back, when even those students who qualify for and receive intervention services are capable of leaving first grade exhibiting much more sophisticated non-counting behaviors.”
-Angela G. Andrews (source) …and see here
Although the marketing materials for “Touch Math” claim that it is “multi-sensory,” in reality it does not meet the requirements or goals of an authentic multi-sensory teaching approaches:
“An argument used to support using Touch Math™ is that it is like any manipulative that is used to make connections to concepts then discarded when no longer necessary. This argument is in error. First, touch points are not manipulatives, but rather arbitrary symbols added to the numbers. Manipulatives are real concrete materials that are used to help students make connections to abstract mathematical concepts. Dots on paper are not real, nor are they concrete, but simply additional abstract markings.”
-Angela G. Andrews (source)
As a tutor, I’ve worked with students who have learned ‘Touch Math’ in public school special education classes and seen how very lost they are at our first session when I ask an addition problem like “what is 5+2?”…they are completely dependent on drawing the dots on the written number and then counting the dots in ones. They have not learned any visualization strategies through true multi-sensory approaches to be able to manipulate concretely or visualize dice dot pattern quantities for “5” and “2,” nor have they been taught strategies like “If 5 +1 is 6, then 5+1 and 1 more must be 7.” It takes time for them to break the habit of ‘Touch Math’ dependence, and develop number sense using manipulatives and visualization through games and activities.
If you are considering using Touch Math or your child has an IEP and the special education teachers are using Touch Math with your dyslexic child, please read this article written by a recipient of the Presidential Award of Excellence for Mathematics Teaching about the dangers of using Touch Math with students who have normal to above-average IQs and have dyslexia/dyscalculia:
“Parents, who may be impressed initially with their child’s ability to compute so quickly and accurately, are later alarmed when they realize the damage done to their children’s mathematical health.
As a pre-service university instructor of math methods, I observe the crippling effects of Touch Math™ on students each term as they try to break this tiresome habit and, at the same time, develop the missing number sense they know they need to teach mathematics themselves.
At best, Touch Math™ is an unnecessary handicap to impose on those students who are capable of building an understanding of mathematics, given adequate time and experience. At worst, Touch Math™ fails to encourage strategic, logical, and autonomous thinking, replacing it with a mechanical, non-thinking process, which will not prepare our students for the challenges of the 21st century.
Teachers who are considering using Touch Math™ or who currently use this system are urged to reflect on the following questions about the possible long term effects of teaching Touch Math™:
•While Touch Math™ is easy to teach and easy to use, does it actually promote mathematical understanding?–Angela G. Andrews. Mathematics teacher for over 25 years and 1990 recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics Teaching. excerpt from “The Potential Dangers of Teaching The Touch Math System of Computation,” 2005.
•Can I be assured that I am not “saddling” my students with a system that produces quick, accurate answers in the short term, but has the potential for doing permanent harm?“
For additional testimonials by parents and students who found the effects of “Touch Math” harmful to the development of their mathematical intelligence and number sense, please read these posts in response to Angela G. Andrew’s critique of “Touch Math.”
I have also found many “Common Core” curricula to be inadequate and ineffective for teaching math to dyslexic students.
As a parent with a graduate degree in engineering and a self-avowed lover of math, even I was frustrated and annoyed with the “Common Core” textbooks and homework my children brought home and realized I would never have pursued a degree in engineering if I had been “taught” math using this curricula when I was in school – and I’m not dyslexic. Just because a low-quality, for-profit publishing company compiled a curriculum that “checked-off all the boxes” of the Common Core Standards, DOES NOT mean that curriculum is structured, multi-sensory, effective, evidence-based, or at all helpful to leading students to successful learning outcomes. These same low-quality corporate conglomerate curriculum publishing companies make millions in contracts with school districts to administer the “Common Core” standardized testing, assuring the school district representatives that because they write and grade the tests, that their curriculum is the best chance for students to achieve high test scores – this is what happens when lobbyists, instead of educators and researchers, design curriculum and enact a profiting scheme with public policy officials that damage our children’s’ educational experience (source) – please watch this John Oliver segment on Standardized Testing) .
Other nations with above average international math scores are not using “Touch Math” to increase their students’ understanding of math, nor are they using a “Common Core” curriculum, as most public schools in California now do in the first through eighth grades. In fact, U.S. student math performance has declined since introducing “Common Core” curriculum:
“It’s logical to attribute this decline directly in part to Common Core. The standards embrace student-centered “discovery” learning, where the teacher acts as more facilitator than instructor. Especially for disadvantaged students, that pedagogy doesn’t work. Project Follow Through, the largest and most extensive government education study in history, proved this by following tens of thousands participant children for years to determine the best means of educating them. The answer was direct instruction — an approach disfavored in Common Core.” (Source)
The OECD’s 2022 PISA rankings show the US dropping even further below the average in math:
See this source and this one for more information about how Pearson publishing and their “Common Core” scheme is failing our students, while profiting at the same time.
What about High School-level math help for students with dyslexia and dyscalculia?
The curricula and teaching methods I shared above will cover mathematics subjects from Kindergarten through 5th grade. But what about students in middle and high school who are trying to understand Pre-Algebra, Algebra and Geometry?
One of my children is currently in 10th grade so I have some experience in this area. In 9th grade, my son was accepted into the Creative Writing program of a competitive charter arts school in Southern California (side note: being dyslexic does not preclude one from being a successful author/creative writer….the ability to spell correctly has nothing to do with intelligence or ability to devise interesting characters and plot lines, in fact, these are dyslexic creative strengths.) I was hopeful as a parent of a dyslexic student that administrators and teachers at an arts school would be more aware of the talents and educational needs of dyslexic minds, since creativity is a right-brained strength.
I was wrong to be hopeful.
The school decision-makers had adopted an unproven, non-evidence-based mathematics curricula that was in my opinion abominable in content and severely lacking in direct instruction for students. The “Common Core” Integrated I textbook was fragmented, difficult to read, and rarely offered example problems for homework. Quite often I would be unable to help my child with a homework problem (and I have a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering and love math), so my child would ask their math tutor, a former math teacher, and their tutor would be stumped, then their tutor would call their adult child (who graduated from Stanford) and their Stanford graduate was unable to solve the 9th grade math homework problem – so nobody was learning and everyone was frustrated). This is unfortunately a typical result of the failure of allowing for-profit publishing companies to decide “Common Core” curricula and testing standards (and then those same companies receive millions of dollars in contracts to administer standardized tests (source) – please watch this John Oliver segment on Standardized Testing) .
Anyhow, I reached the conclusion that my child had no options of receiving a “free and appropriate” mathematics education in public schools bound to using low-quality, unproven, and ineffective “Common Core” curricula and “self-discovery” -based teaching methods, so we decided to homeschool for 10th grade (and by homeschool, I mean that my son attends Community College classes – for which he receives both high school and college credits, is enrolled in online live classes for math and science, and attends a few in-person local classes for electives (art and archery)). My son is having a much better year so far in terms or learning more, sleeping enough, and having some down time to be creative and explore his interests without feeling overly stressed or unnecessarily frustrated with school work.
Getting back to high school math….
We found an online vendor of math classes that fits my son’s learning style and needs for mathematics: “Mr. D Math.” We found the sample lecture videos and sample homework assignments to be refreshingly straightforward and enjoyable when compared to the “common core” textbook and homework from his 9th Grade class, and so we signed up for the Geometry classes for 10th grade. So far, so good!
I recommend checking out Mr. D Math classes if your high school student has dyslexia/dyscalculia. These classes are easy to enroll in for homeschoolers, and if your child is in public school, there may be a way to enroll your student and transfer the credits and grade to their high school, as a substitute for the classes offered at the school.
I will update this section with more information as we progress through high school.
I have included many links to curriculum I recommend on this page and want to be clear that I am not receiving any sponsorship or advertising funds from any of these companies. I just want to share available and effective resources with other parents, teachers, and tutors for the sake of the students who are currently suffering with unproven and frustrating curricula in public schools.
