She
Did It!
Curriculum:
Mathematics
Grades:
4-10
Contributed
by: Mrs.
Susan Ispirian
Sue-george.Ispirian@excite.com
When my daughter
was 5 years old I realized she had a problem. It was odd - she couldn't
see what a straight line was. For her there was no diference between
the edge of a jig-saw or the conecting sides. Odd. What I didn't
realise at the time, was that it was indicative of the fact that
she was going to have problems with math. She could count but not
relate the numbers to a number of items. She couldn't at 6 grasp
the concept of counting. She couldn't see shapes - her math future
was bleak. When she was 8, I realized she wasn't progressing at
all. She couldn't add 3 + 4 without using fingers. When I showed
her subtraction and used a bowl of fruit to show her how you took
4 pieces of fruit away for 11 and there were 7 left, so if you knew
you had 11 to start with, you could count up to see how many were
missing. She thought - genuinely, that I was doing magic. She just
couldn't understand how I could know how many pieces of fruit she
had taken. I've gone on a bit to demonstrate just how bad she was.
We worked for 45 minutes every night using books the school gave
us. She needed 5 or 6 times the amount of time that the other students
did and my main job was to keep her motivated. The fact is we turned
the situation around, so if your child has a problem, you can make
a difference. She is at the university now taking a businesss studies
degree having obtained A level math scores.
It wasn't easy but she did it!
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