By Sara Finegan

In my tenure as a special educator, I’ve taught kids in a Special Day Class setting as well as those who would be classified as Resource and kept in the general education environment.    I’ve taught almost every subject area in separate classroom and general ed classroom, in grades 4 through 12.   I’ve taught kids with mild to moderate learning deficits, and even a few with more moderate to severe disabilities.

The more I work with these wonderful kids, the more I am made aware that it is not the content of the lessons, but the manner in which we teach them that makes the difference in learning.    Direct, explicit instruction, customized to the child’s individual learning style and need, is the key to the door that accesses, for the child, the material.    Even the best teachers using the best practices for instruction, may need to tweak how they do things to accommodate our learners’ deficits.

Let me give some examples:

Avery was born premature and since early childhood has exhibited difficulties with memory, particularly sequential memory.  He is now getting ready for middle school.  He does not know the months of the year in order, or the seasons in which the months belong.  He just learned his phone number.  He has difficulty memorizing multiplication tables.  He has significant deficits in the area of auditory processing, and may have receptive language deficits.  He certainly displays difficulties with expressive language – he has difficulty at times retrieving even the names of long-time friends.  He is friendly, funny, athletic, and popular in his class.

Justin is an upper primary student who has an anxiety disorder.  He has trouble falling asleep at night, is fearful of the dark and strange places, and desperate that nobody know when he doesn’t understand something in class.  He is shy, but friendly, and has a good sense of humor.  He masks his terrible fear of exposure with a feigned carelessness.  He refuses help at home from his parents and peers, which makes homework and remedial learning difficult.    Justin, like Avery, does not process what he hears, and tries to model his academic behavior after what he sees his peers doing, without understanding the concepts  being taught.   A popular kid, Justin’s learning is impeded by his internal anxiety and his processing deficits.

Shayna has ADHD and needs to be constantly moving in order to function at all in class.  She’s tried a variety of medications, all of which has side effects that made it impossible for her to continue.  With preferential seating and lots of visual cues, she can manage in class for the most part, but has frequent episodes of panic when, after emerging from a short episode of inattention, she realizes that she missed something important and doesn’t know what to do.    She is sloppy and careless in her work, but is motivated to learn.    Her writing skills are very limited; spelling is atrocious, punctuation non-existent, and she often skips words, writes run-on or incomplete sentences, and never, unless prompted, uses detail to support her ideas and flesh out the text.

Toby is a high-functioning autistic learner.  His expressive and receptive language deficits make understanding what the teacher is saying, including directions, difficult, so he does a lot of watching and copying what others are doing.  He thrives where there’s math calculations to do, but in terms of setting up problems, navigating through word problems, or showing mathematical reasoning, he is far below grade level.   Toby is a good mechanical reader, but his comprehension skills are limited to the surface, literal meaning of text.

All of these kids are in a general education class of 30 students, with a fabulous teacher who provides differentiated instruction better than anyone I’ve ever seen:  Every lesson includes kinesthetic, visual, auditory, and musical and/or artistic segments designed to address every type of learner.    She knows her stuff, and she knows how to make learning fun, energetic, and successful.   Everything is color-coded, rhythmic, and well-spaced so that kids aren’t overwhelmed by the material.

            And yet……….our four friends are falling seriously behind.    

Walk into the classroom, and take a seat in a corner.  You will see a dynamic teacher leading kids through a fun lesson.  There are pauses for movement, there are funny accents to keep your attention in the right place, open-ended questions, modeling, and cooperative learning activities.  Kids are active, engaged, and working together.

Look at our four friends.  They are smiling.  Eyes are glued on the teacher when she’s providing instruction.  They copy everything she does.  They are well-behaved. 

But when it comes time to work with partners or independently, they are helpless.  They look at what their partners are doing and try to follow along.  Ask them what they are doing, and they can’t really say.  If they’ve followed the modeled lesson and copied the info into the graphic organizer, using colored pencils, just like the teacher did, they don’t know what to DO with the information when left to their own devices.  They let their partners do most of the work and strive to look busy.

Avery needs 45 more minutes than anyone else to finish a task.  Justin doesn’t finish, but does enough to get by.  Toby copies exactly what his partner wrote.  Shayna walks over to the teacher eight times in 35 minutes to show her what she’s done so far and ask if it’s right.  It isn’t very good, but at least she’s trying.

Next scene:  math class.  The kids are working on multiple-step problem solving.  Avery and Justin are confused, and are using the wrong operation to solve equations.  Shayna loses track of what she’s doing and has to start over again three times.  Toby is sitting, staring at a word problem, unsure how to set up an equation.  He shuts down completely until the teacher approaches and writes an equation out for him, at which point he quickly solves it in his head.  He writes the answer without showing his work. 

You get the picture.  You’ve probably seen each of these kids somewhere in one of your classes.

            So what is missing?

            I think that what is missing is direct, explicit, step-by-step instruction. 

Instructional trends have been moving increasingly to the exploratory learning module, where kids are given open-ended questions and work together to explore and reason through answers using grade-level materials.    Understanding the concepts behind mathematical operations is given the same importance as being able to use the operations properly.  Experimenting with concepts and ideas and giving kids time to try on and try out different ways of writing, thinking about the content of the textbook constitute a good part of the day.    We want kids to be able to reason, not just answer by rote, right?  Absolutely. 

But there’s a problem with this.  If our kids can’t really understand the language, can’t process it or use it, if their processing deficits impede the reasoning needed to do the work at grade level, or if their reading and writing skills are below grade level so that they struggle just to make sense of the textbook, all of the exploratory learning in the world is not going to achieve anything at all.  In fact, it is going to confuse the kids and get them more tangled up with feelings of inadequacy and confusion, frustration and anxiety, than they need to be.

These kids need coping strategies, problem-solving strategies, and to be taught, shown, and given multiple opportunities to practice, the step-by-step process for doing the work.

• They need to have those steps provided to them clearly, in writing, on charts displayed in the room, and in their binders.  They need to be shown, over and over, each step, in isolation.  Practice just doing Step 1 ten times.  Then do Step 2 ten times.  Then practice Steps 1 and 2 five times.  And so on.
• They need to be told what you are looking to see them do.  “I want to see you reading the question, and underlining the key word.”   “I want to see you scanning the text, line by line, looking for the key word.”  “I want to see you lining up your problem one number right underneath the other.”  “I want to see you highlighting the operations words in the math problem.”

• Give them templates.  Give them checklists.  Give them small group supervision as they practice, without making them feel that they are being singled out because they’re dumb, or “special”.    Send them home with the step-by-step instructions and five practice opportunities as homework, with a reward when they bring it back. 

What does this require of us, the teachers?  It requires that we be willing to break tasks down into smaller bits, and to create clear, concise, and easy to remember explanations or instructions for each.  It requires that we be creative enough to find mnemonics, songs, goofy slogans, and pictures of the key elements of the lesson.  It requires that we  be flexible enough to create small group opportunities, DAILY,  to help guide our students with learning difficulties, in the general education classroom, not as a pull-out where they are singled out as “special”.  It requires that we be sometimes willing to go against the teaching modules that our newer textbooks and educational programs dictate , to include the older-fashioned direct instruction that these kids need.

accommodations · differentiated instruction · direct instruction · directions · explicit instruction · exploratory learning · Inclusion · learning · learning disabilities · learning styles · repitition · resource · rote learning · Sara Finegan · special education · teaching strategies

By Sara Finegan

         An inordinate number of kids are growing up without learning their multiplication facts.  Some of this is due to the prevalent use of calculators.  Some is due to the fact that there’s been an overall rejection of rote learning – throwing the baby out with the bathwater, in this case, I think.  Some of it is due to low numeracy as a result of math disabilities. 

         Many kids with learning disabilities really struggle with numbers and their values.  And, I think, it also has to do with processing memory and retention of information that isn’t used on a regular basis.

         I think there’s a place for rote learning of math facts in a demanding classroom.   The only way to learn multiplication facts and what happens when you add ten to a number is to recite them over and over in some way or another. 

         The way I use is skip-counting.  Skip-counting can be done starting at any age, and should continue to be done if not daily, then at least several times a week once the kids know the routine.

 I cannot stress enough the importance of visual cuing when it comes to math.  In this case, a giant number line, or individual number lines to 100 for each student are  in order.  You can also use individual multiplication charts or a giant one; the point is that the kids have to have the numbers 1-100 in front of them when they are skip-counting, at least during the first few months.

           A lot of teachers practice skip-counting with their students through 3, 4, and 5 multiplication facts, and then stop.  As a result, many kids know their multiplication facts through five, and can’t go higher.  Don’t let this happen.

         It can be a part of your daily routine to start with 3, and have the kids skip-count to 60.  Move to 4, then 5, and 6.  Once they know those, move to 7 and 8.  Practice them religiously.  I like to point at the numbers on a chart or number line with a pointer or a yardstick at first, but later it becomes a favorite reward for a student to be allowed to stand at the front of the class and cue the numbers. 

         It doesn’t take long for kids to internalize the facts as they continue to skip-count regularly.  But here’s the deal:  You can’t stop here. 

         One mistake I’ve seen over and over again is special educators working on skip-counting with their students and then never extending the skill into actual math problems.  And when I say “actual math problems,” I don’t mean a standard multiplication worksheet.  I mean math problems that require critical thinking.

         There’s no point in rote learning unless the information learned by rote is applied in complex situations.  Skip-counting alone, in a vacuum, has little meaning.  We need our students to be able to use the math facts to solve word problems, to reason through division problems, to figure out the value of x, and to  calculate prices and amounts. 

          So teach the multiplication facts by rote, but then require your students to use them, and use them in a variety of ways.  Only in this way will they truly be learning.

          In a demanding classroom, rote memorization has a place in supporting mastery of facts to be used in deeper-level situations.

critical thinking · demanding classroom · high expectations · learning disabilities · learning disabled · low numeracy · mastery · math fluency · math language · multiplication · Nimble with Numbers · processing · rigor · rigorous instruction · rote learning · Sara Finegan · skip counting · special education · standards · visual cuing