Students with math learning disabilities are often impeded by several factors, including past low achievement, low expectations, and poor instruction. Despite these difficulties, children can be retaught strategies for math success. A lack of basic math skills is common, and progress is often gradual, according to research by Cawley, Fitzmaurice, Shaw, Kahn, & Bates, 1979; Cawley & Miller, 1989; and McLeod and Armstrong 1982. McLeod and Armstrong found studnets had particular difficulties with basic math facts, such as percentages, decimals, measurement and math language.
Students with learning disabilities often have trouble memorizing basic number facts such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. This presents particular challenges when eighth-grade lessons in fractions and algebra come up, which can involve multiple math facts all at once. A common strategy is to use pocket-size fact, addition, multiplication and subtraction charts to help students advance to more complex problems. As students process math problems faster, teachers can reduce the students' reliance on the charts. Later, once students have mastered their facts, they can be blackened out so that students don't begin to rely too heavily on them.
Learning strategies are an effective way to teach math to eighth-grade learning disabled students. They involve how a student organizes and uses skills to learn lessons more effectively. They include thought -- what students plan, recognizing when there is little understanding and remembering previously learned topics -- and physical learning concepts such as note taking, rereading and story capturing. Teaching students cognitive strategies such as how to read, visualize, estimate and compute are effective for students with learning disabilities. Megnacognitive strategies such as self-questioning and self-checking techniques are also recommended. Both methods can be reinforced by teachers modeling the strategies, monitoring how students use them and providing feedback, according to the Access Center, which teaches strategies for K-8 students.
Sometimes less-complicated approaches are best. Activities such as games, small daily practice sessions, self progress charts that let students track their own progress and instruction, not just practice, are also effective.