Current availability (school-day and within AL5 only or via Zoom): Tuesday at 9.15am
What do Dyscalculic tendencies look like?
Difficulties with subitising
Look at the image to the left. How many balls are there?
Perhaps you 'just knew' there were six balls?
Maybe you grouped together the balls to count them, perhaps noticing that there were four balls together in the middle bottom part of the image, plus a further two balls towards the top left? Or did you notice that that the balls could be counted as two groups of three?
You may have counted the balls individually.
Learners with dyscalculic tendencies may find it difficult to recognise patterns in numbers. This is called 'subitising'. Recognising patterns in numbers is important to be able to calculate efficiently. For example, if a learner knows that five dots added to four dots is a pattern that always equals nine dots, when performing addition sums, they will quickly be able to recall that 5 + 4 = 9. They may also know automatically that 4 + 5 = 9. As learning progresses, they may be more easily able to automatically recall that 5 + 4 or 4 + 5 = 9 when performing column addition. In turn, this supports efficient and accurate retrieval of related subtraction number facts, such as 9 - 5 = 4 and 9 - 4 = 5.
Difficulties with estimation
Learners with dyscalculic tendencies may find it difficult to estimate. This is because they may find it challenging to make sense of numbers in terms of their order of magnitude (size) or to consider how numbers relate to each other. Estimation is an important mathematical skill that supports consideration of whether an answer makes sense. If I subtract 24 from 48, can my answer be bigger than 48? No, and it must be quite a lot smaller than 48 because, looking at the tens column, if I am removing the two tens in 24 from the four tens in 48, I am halving the number of tens in the answer. Halving a number reduces its size - it makes it smaller. Looking at the ones columns, do I recognise that four is half of eight? Do I see the relationships between the digits in the tens and ones columns?
Difficulties with ordering
Learners with dyscalculic tendencies may find it difficult to order or sequence numbers. Some of the cognitive processing difficulties that are thought to underlie dyslexic tendencies may also underpin dyscalculic tendencies. For example, challenges with short term or working memory or speed of processing difficulties. A learner may have difficulties automatically recalling basic maths facts, such as number bonds or the names allocated to numerical symbols or operations. For example, an understanding that the digit '1' is written as the word 'one', or that the symbol 'x' can mean 'times', 'lots of', 'multiply', or 'groups of' - as well as the letter 'x'. They may exhibit challenges counting backwards or when recalling times tables. They may be able to perform calculations they have rote learned but find it difficult when asked to explain what they are doing and why. For example, can they explain how they know which number is larger: 43 or 34 (the concept of place value).