It's estimated that Dyscalculia affects 1 in 20 people. In the DSM-5, dyscalculia is called “specific learning disability with impairment in mathematics.”
Children effectivly learn new concepts through a natural developmental progression from motor-based interaction through a symbolic understanding of a concept.
Traditional teaching methods often rely on language and memorization. This often creates frustration rather than understanding for students with dyscalculia and other learning disabilities.
How Dyscalculia Manifests
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Kindergarten - 1st Grade
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2nd - 5th Grade
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- Started counting late
- Struggles to memorize basic math facts
- Often counts on fingers instead of seeing quantities (subitizing)
- Gets numbers out of order
- Seems to ‘get it’ one day, but forgets it the next
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- Forgets multiplication tables
- Struggles with vocabulary for concepts and procedures
- Difficulty making estimates
- Word questions are hard
- Works slowly
- Low math confidence
Value of Physical Manipulatives for Dyscalculia
Dyscalculia is more than “struggling with math.” It’s a specific learning difference that affects number sense, memory, and spatial reasoning. Stern Math materials address these challenges head-on.
- Multisensory Learning: Math blocks engage touch, sight, and movement, tapping into multiple pathways for understanding.
- Self-correcting: Students stay positive because the materials lead to the right answer without negative feedback from educators. For example, the 4-block does not fully fill the space of the 5-block slot. It also does not fit into the 3-block slot.
- Math Games: Our lessons focus on games making repeated practice fun, retaining attention, allowing kids to practice what they know and what they do not!
- Spatial Understanding: Having the opportunity to see size relationships and the measurement of numbers can make abstract ideas concrete. Creating a durable foundation of math understanding.
Let's Play the Snake Game!
Great for Kids 3+
This 3-minute game is a student favorite! Here, we see a Counting Board which is a key part of Set A. Students take turns flipping over numbers that correspond to blocks. As they gather the blocks, they lay them out, and the longest snake wins! This game has multiple variations to engage students at different math levels.
Let's Play: Remainder Is Your Score!
Great for students in 2nd Grade+
Practice dividing by 5 with “Remainder Is Your Score.” Using Set B, we shuffle number markers, see how many fives fit into each number, and use the remainder as points. Follow along for a quick way to practice division.
Empower Your Learners Today
Get started with our multisensory manipulatives.
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Learning Numbers 1-10 Set A
Regular price $330.00 USDRegular priceUnit price per$330.00 USDSale price $330.00 USD -
Set B: Place Value & Operations - 1 to 100
Regular price $435.00 USDRegular priceUnit price per$435.00 USDSale price $435.00 USD
Resources for Educators and Parents
We know that supporting a child with learning disabilities is a team effort. That’s why Stern Math offers:
- Educator Trainings: In person or Zoom Training classes to learn how to use our materials most effectively.
- 1-1 Consultations: Set up a meeting with our team to discuss what materials will work best for your specific classroom or child
- Tutoring: We have a team of tutors who work both in person and over Zoom to help struggling students
- Ongoing Support: Our team is here to answer your questions and celebrate your student’s successes.
References
Dr. Schreuder | Dyscalculia Services
Dr. Schreuder is a Dutch educated Pediatrician and Neonatologist and earned her PhD in the field of Epidemiology, specializing on child development. She follows and implements the latest research on the subject of learning differences and best practices for intervention. She volunteered at Neuhaus and a fMRI study at UT and was trained as a reading tutor at UT. The tutoring experience brought back fond memories of her first student job as a Math tutor.
Margaret Stern | Structural Arithmetic and Children with Learning Disabilities
Margaret Stern was one of the creators of the Stern Math program and expert in teaching students with Learning Disabilities. She published this "Structural Arithmetic and Children with Learning Disabilities" in the 27th Annual Conference of The Orton Society, New York, New York, 1976.
Rae Jacobson | How to Spot Dyscalculia
Rae Jacobson is a writer, ADHD expert, and former senior editor at the Child Mind Institute. Her work has appeared in New York Magazine, the Daily Beast, Rolling Stone, Parenting, and more. She is the Editorial Content Director at Understood.org.
Stefan Haberstroh, Gerd Schulte-Körne | The Diagnosis and Treatment of Dyscalculia
Link to Article
Abstract:
Background
3–7% of all children, adolescents, and adults suffer from dyscalculia. Severe, persistent difficulty performing arithmetical calculations leads to marked impairment in school, at work, and in everyday life and elevates the risk of comorbid mental disorders. The state of the evidence underlying various methods of diagnosing and treating this condition is unclear.
Methods
Systematic literature searches were carried out from April 2015 to June 2016 in the PsycInfo, PSYNDEX, MEDLINE, ProQuest, ERIC, Cochrane Library, ICTRP, and MathEduc databases. The main search terms on dyscalculia were the German terms “Rechenstörung,” “Rechenschwäche,” and “Dyskalkulie” and the English terms “dyscalculia,” “math disorder, and “math disability.” The data from the retrieved studies were evaluated in a meta-analysis, and corresponding recommendations on the diagnosis and treatment of dyscalculia were jointly issued by the 20 societies and associations that participated in the creation of this guideline.
Results
The diagnosis of dyscalculia should only be made if the person in question displays below-average mathematical performance when seen in the context of relevant information from the individual history, test findings, clinical examination, and further psychosocial assessment. The treatment should be directed toward the individual mathematical problem areas. The mean effect size found across all intervention trials was 0.52 (95% confidence interval [0.42; 0.62]). Treatment should be initiated early on in the primary-school years and carried out by trained specialists in an individual setting; comorbid symptoms and disorders should also receive attention. Persons with dyscalculia are at elevated risk of having dyslexia as well (odds ratio [OR]: 12.25); the same holds for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and for other mental disorders, both internalizing (such as anxiety and depression) and externalizing (e.g., disorders characterized by aggression and rule-breaking).
Conclusion
Symptom-specific interventions involving the training of specific mathematical content yield the best results. There is still a need for high-quality intervention trials and for suitable tests and learning programs for older adolescents and adults.
Jerome Bruner | Toward a Theory of Instruction
Information about Toward a Theory of Instruction:
This country’s most challenging writer on education presents here a distillation, for the general reader, of half a decade’s research and reflection. His theme is dual: how children learn, and how they can best be helped to learn—how they can be brought to the fullest realization of their capacities.
Jerome Bruner, Harper’s reports, has “stirred up more excitement than any educator since John Dewey.” His explorations into the nature of intellectual growth and its relation to theories of learning and methods of teaching have had a catalytic effect upon educational theory. In this new volume the subjects dealt with in The Process of Education are pursued further, probed more deeply, given concrete illustration and a broader context.
“One is struck by the absence of a theory of instruction as a guide to pedagogy,” Mr. Bruner observes; “in its place there is principally a body of maxims.” The eight essays in this volume, as varied in topic as they are unified in theme, are contributions toward the construction of such a theory. What is needed in that enterprise is, inter alia, “the daring and freshness of hypotheses that do not take for granted as true what has merely become habitual,” and these are amply evidenced here.
At the conceptual core of the book is an illuminating examination of how mental growth proceeds, and of the ways in which teaching can profitably adapt itself to that progression and can also help it along. Closely related to this is Mr. Bruner’s “evolutionary instrumentalism,” his conception of instruction as the means of transmitting the tools and skills of a culture, the acquired characteristics that express and amplify man’s powers—especially the crucial symbolic tools of language, number, and logic. Revealing insights are given into the manner in which language functions as an instrument of thought.
The theories presented are anchored in practice, in the empirical research from which they derive and in the practical applications to which they can be put. The latter are exemplified incidentally throughout and extensively in detailed descriptions of two courses Mr. Bruner has helped to construct and to teach—an experimental mathematics course and a multifaceted course in social studies. In both, the students’ encounters with the material to be mastered are structured and sequenced in such a way as to work with, and to reinforce, the developmental process.
Written with all the style and élan that readers have come to expect of Mr. Bruner, Toward a Theory of Instruction is charged with the provocative suggestions and inquiries of one of the great innovators in the field of education.