Capturing the HOW of Mathematical Word Problems [Show]

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Gretchen Roe: 00:00:04.865
Welcome to the Demme Learning Show. Our mission here is to help families stay in the learning journey wherever it takes them. This bonus episode was previously recorded as a webinar and was not created with the audio listener in mind. We hope you will find value in today’s episode.

Gretchen Roe: 00:00:23.327
Hi everybody. Welcome this afternoon to this wonderful presentation of capturing the how of mathematical word problems. I have to tell you, we’ve heard from a lot of you, and many of you say how much this causes strife and anxiety in your household. We certainly understand, so we are here to maybe alleviate some of that anxiety, give you some game plans, talk about why they’re so important, and then be able to help you move forward with them with a plan for the future. So my name is Gretchen Roe. I am our community outreach coordinator, and I am also the homeschooling mom of six. My husband and I graduated four from homeschool through high school. Our fifth one was homeschooled to high school. And then the caboose in the train was homeschooled to middle school, and he, this year, is a senior in high school. And I’m delighted to be joined by my colleague, Lisa Chimento today, and I’ll let Lisa introduce herself.

Lisa Chimento: 00:01:27.557
Hi, everyone. My name is Lisa. I am a customer success consultant and placement specialist here at Demme Learning. I’ve been with the company on a full-time basis for about five years. Before then, I worked at homeschool conventions for probably around 11 or 12 years, I think now. And it’s such a joy to meet so many families and to see the commitment that you have to your children and their education. I homeschooled my four children from birth through senior year in high school. They are all adults and out of the house now. I miss them terribly, but it kind of fills a hole in my life to be able to work with homeschooling families now and just sort of pay forward some of the wealth of information and help and support that I received when I was homeschooling them.

Gretchen Roe: 00:02:18.263
And I have to tell you all, Lisa has forgotten more about Math-U-See than I will ever know. And she also provides support to our families with algebra one, which is absolutely tremendous. If you’ve ever had the opportunity to experience Lisa in a support capacity, it’s something you’ll never forget because the compassion with which she embraces the process is awe inspiring, and I appreciate her very much. She’s passionate as well about helping families walk through this process of word problems. And often we will stand in a booth at a convention, and parents will say to us, “Oh, my kids are fine with computational math, but we don’t do word problems.” And it makes us cringe because the truth of the matter is when math comes to all of us as an adult, it’s a word problem. So we want to be and make this relevant for you. We want to be here for you today. We want to answer your questions. So many of you registered. I’ve got over a hundred questions here to answer. But we want to begin with some information that we feel is relevant. So Lisa, I’m going to let you start as far as the explanation of how with a word problem and about where the thought process begins.

Lisa Chimento: 00:03:38.264
What Gretchen said was right you know, Math-U-See says right from the outset, the reason that we need to learn math is so that we can solve word problems. Word problems are life application of math skills, and we’re going to encounter them every day of our lives as adults, no matter what field you go into, if you’re a homemaker, if you’re at university if you’re going to be in a career, you’re going to encounter the need to be able to do math. And so we want to help students start right from the get-go when they’re learning math in their early education all the way through, how to be able to approach a word problem so that that doesn’t drive them crazy, doesn’t stress them out or cause dread. And probably the first and most important thing to say is start fresh. Don’t sit with math for 15, 20 minutes, half an hour, and then go do a word problem. It’s not going to work. Unless you just have a child who loves this stuff, that’s not going to work. So if you’ve been doing some math work, split it up. If you’ve been doing your computational work earlier in the day, they finished all of that, and now they’ve got a couple of word problems to do at the end of that lesson, take a break. Let them go do other stuff, have lunch, whatever. Come away from it for a while, let their brain rest, and then approach it with fresh eyes, a fresh way of thinking, and not already fatigued. So that’s the first step. Second, read through that problem all the way. And you might need to read it two or three times. Read it out loud, have your student read it out loud. Sometimes hearing their own voice makes it make better sense. If you find that the way that the word problem is worded is a little awkward for you, ask them to rephrase it if they need to. Sometimes the way a question is worded sounds a little odd to our ears. Go ahead and flip it around if you need to so that the question makes sense to you. And don’t even worry about the numbers at first. Just read that word problem and then stop and say, what is it that it’s actually asking me? Sometimes there will be information in that word problem that has nothing to do with what they have to work with. It’s just thrown in there to trip them up a little bit. And so they might need to just ignore certain parts of it. And if that’s the case, put a line through it so it doesn’t distract you.

Gretchen Roe: 00:06:16.331
One of the things we often say to parents is, those who write word problems are kind of evil cheese monkeys, you know? The goal is to trip you up. And so if we can teach kids not to panic when they see a word problem, but not to grasp the numbers first. But to really understand what the words are asking of them, it makes all the difference in the world for them. And Lisa is right. I can think of one very common problem that is in the beta level. And they’re talking about adding two numbers together and for some reason they throw in the age of one of the characters. Has nothing to do with adding those two numbers together. There is nothing that says that you can’t take a pen and cross out what’s not relevant. The curriculum police will not come get you, I promise.

Lisa Chimento: 00:07:11.598
That’s true. And those numbers appearing on the page just start looking like so many numbers and what do we do with them all? If they have nothing to do with the problem, cross it out. Get that out of your child’s site so it doesn’t become a distraction. Let’s see. So, oh, here’s a good one. Gretchen proposes this, and I think it’s brilliant. You can read that problem out loud and actually bleep out the numbers so that they don’t become the first and foremost thing you’re looking at or thinking about. Read the problem, read the words, bleep out the numbers, the first couple of times through. And then once they’ve got a grasp of what it’s actually asking, then go ahead and reinsert those numbers. So now you can deal with the numbers themselves keywords. Let’s talk about keywords because I think that sometimes we don’t even pay attention to them and sometimes we pay too much attention to them. We have to be careful that they don’t become the focus and the only thing we deal with but they can be a huge help. And so it’s important to familiarize yourself with keywords. And I’ll mention something about this later about one way to do that but when you find what those keywords are, you can circle them so that the student knows this word is important and it’s going to play a part in telling which operation to use because that’s a big question. You probably heard this from your kids. Okay, I see this. I read this. I understand this. What do I do with those numbers? Do I add? Do I divide? What am I supposed to do? Sometimes the keyword gives you the clue as to what to do.

Gretchen Roe: 00:08:54.443
Lisa, before you go on, I want you to talk a little bit about where keywords can give us a mistake. And I heard you say this at a conference once upon a time and now you all I’m really tapping Lisa’s memory so we’ll see if she can go, oh, what are you talking about, Griffin? What I’m talking about is recognizing when you’re multiplying fractions.

Lisa Chimento: 00:09:18.924
Yes.

Gretchen Roe: 00:09:20.216
And can you make that explanation? Because I think this is a very important place to understand that keywords aren’t the endgame for understanding word problems.

Lisa Chimento: 00:09:30.703
Right. I think I know what you’re talking about. And so these word problems are happening from alpha all the way through. So we have to recognize that they’re not only going to involve addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. There are different things that will play into this. But when we’re dealing with fractions, we are in a different world. We’re on a different planet here because we’re dealing with numbers for the most part that are less than one. And so the rules change. And if you see a word like of in a keyword, that is often an indication that they’re supposed to multiply. And so now if they are multiplying two fractions, they need to realize you are dealing not just with a fraction times a fraction but a fraction of a fraction. And the bottom line here is that your answer is going to be smaller than the two numbers you started with. So it’s totally different than when you’re dealing with whole numbers. Of course, the answer, the product of a multiplication problem would normally be larger than the two factors. In the case of fractions, that number is going to end up being smaller and your child may go, “This doesn’t make sense. I’m multiplying, I’m ending up with a smaller answer,” it’s because we’re dealing with a fraction of a fraction. And that word of right there is one of those keywords you want to pay attention to. It will mean something different when you’re dealing with whole numbers than when you’re dealing with fractions.

Gretchen Roe: 00:11:01.297
And I think that’s a very good illustration for you to understand because sometimes parents think keywords are the endgame. And so they go into a word problem and they just circle the keywords and then they don’t come up with a right answer and they– and that begets frustration as well. So let me also say as an aside, there’s nothing more frustrating for a student than to work with word problems, get an answer that’s incorrect, and they don’t find out that it’s incorrect for two or three days because in our homeschooling journey, we’ve been frenetically busy and we haven’t paused to evaluate their work. So here’s a tip for you that has nothing to do with word problems and everything to do with satisfaction in the process of math. And that is, make sure that you’re evaluating their math on a daily basis and make sure that in that evaluation process, you’re paying attention to not just the total score versus the correct score. But if they’re not getting things right consistently with the same premise, Lisa, can you talk a little bit more about that? You do a wonderful job explaining this.

Lisa Chimento: 00:12:16.528
Yeah. Sometimes, errors are just careless little thing – they were working too fast; they missed something – but you know that they understand it. But if you are seeing errors, what’s more important than the score they got on that day’s work is what are those errors? Are they indication of a lack of understanding of the concept? Maybe they don’t have their facts memorized yet. It’s worth your time to take a few minutes and go in and investigate, see if there’s a pattern to the errors, and then have the student come back and see if they can spot where they made the error themselves. Just saying, “This was wrong” doesn’t help deeper understanding, so. And I’ll say this because we say it often in our roundtables: errors are not bad things in math. They can actually be real great opportunities for deeper understanding. So don’t get upset. Make sure your kids aren’t upset. This is not a time for, “This was a bad thing.” It’s not. It’s an opportunity for deeper understanding. But in order to get that deeper understanding, you need to go back to that error and go, “What happened here? Let’s see if we can find it.” It will be an indication of whether or not your children are showing their work. [laughter] And if they’re not, this is an opportunity to encourage them, “Well, let’s see. If we were showing all the steps, we’d be able to find where things went south in that problem. But you might need to rework the problem to see what happened.” And then if they can correct their own error, that’s golden because now, they’ve grasped something that they didn’t before. So it’s well worth taking a little bit of time and looking at the day’s work at the end of each day and not letting days go by before corrections are made.

Gretchen Roe: 00:14:00.719
Margaret has asked a good question, and she says– well, it’s not really a question. It’s an observation. But I think, Lisa, you can tag on to this because I’ve heard you talk about this. She said as a mom, she never learned that different words are used in word problems. So when we’re talking about keywords, there’s all sorts of resources, but can you talk about how to find those resources and then have a student use them effectively?

Lisa Chimento: 00:14:24.754
Yeah, sure. There are a number of different resources available. So let’s look at the instruction manual. And I know that for the lower levels, many parents just put it on the shelf and never crack it open. But that instruction manual has a wealth of information beyond the solutions. The written lesson instruction is done in a very systematic and organized way. And when Steve Demme is teaching in the videos, he’s teaching in a very casual and off-the-cuff manner. He’s speaking to a classroom full of children. And so it’s done in a very engaged way. But the way that the written lesson summaries are laid out is very organized and structured. And that sometimes helps if there’s something that you’re not quite getting, you or your student. So reading that written lesson summary is part of the instruction. It tells the why behind the how. And it goes hand in hand with the video lessons. So don’t neglect it. Secondly, there are word problem tips in every single level. And so if you go to the index in the back of your instruction manual, I can’t tell you what lesson it will be in because in different books, it’s in different lessons. But in your index, it will tell you where to find those word problem tips, and the keywords’ information is in those word problem tips.

Gretchen Roe: 00:15:47.646
Lisa, I wonder if you could also talk about where would a parent go to find a list of those keywords? We’ve talked about this before and the value of having a student create their own keyword chart

Lisa Chimento: 00:16:02.200
Yeah. There are some in the word problem tips that are available there. Honestly, you can– the first time I saw this, I went to Google images, and I found that there were a number of parents and teachers who had made some beautiful charts. They’d just taken a big piece of paper, cut it into four pieces, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and then the keywords were there. What I would recommend– and a caution for you engaged parents, and especially the real creative ones, your tendency will be, I’m going to create a chart for my child. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Ask your child to do it. When they write those keywords themselves, they will remember them better. And so what they can do then is that every time they encounter a new keyword, something that’s new to them and they’re not sure of it, you two have that conversation. Go through that word problem, determine what operation to use, and then add that keyword to the chart. Let your student do it in their own hand. And then they will be compiling for themselves a resource that they can refer to if they need to, but they will have made it themselves. And writing it out themselves is key.

Gretchen Roe: 00:17:19.762
You know, I always learned something valuable from our parents. And having the opportunity to speak often at homeschool conferences means I get the chance to talk to parents in a wide variety of different settings. And I am reminded of a parent that taught me something tremendous this past summer. She said that when her child was an alpha, she took a single sheet of paper, drew that center line, and learned to have a conversation in the word problem process with her student so that her student would say, Mommy, is that a keyword? And she would say, yes, what kind of keyword do you think it is? And so they built their list as they went through the word problems, as they grew in their knowledge. And she said, you know what? That child’s now a college graduate, but she said that list of keywords she started over with every child, and it was a ratty-tatty thing by the time the student was a high schooler. But she said it was a tremendously valuable exercise because it created conversation over the process. And I think that’s one of the things we want to encourage you is to recognize that mathematics on the whole is a language, and students need to be able to have interaction in order to understand that mathematical language. And that makes a tremendous difference for us. Lisa, can you talk about – I know we’ve had parents and you’ve provided support as a customer service rep before you were a placement success consultant – about parents will say, I’ve run out of word problems and we need more practice. So can you give parents the cheat on how they can have more practice?

Lisa Chimento: 00:19:11.375
Yeah. And you know our worksheet generator is a great tool when student needs an extra practice, but it can only generate equations. It can’t do anything with– it can’t generate word problems or anything with an illustration or a graph or anything. So when you get stuck and you feel like you could use more word problems, you have a couple of opportunities here. First of all, if you are in the delta or epsilon or zeta levels, there are actually additional word problems in the instruction manual. So again, go to the index in the back and look under word problems, and you’ll see they’re in four different lessons. They show up. And so you can add a few more there. For those levels where there aren’t additional problems available, you can go back to your students’ book and lift out any of those word problems that they had previously and deliver them verbally to the student and change the nouns and the verbs. That way, you don’t have to go making up your own word problem and figure out what the answer is too because you’ll already have the solution. But you can just change the nouns and verbs. And I think that’s especially helpful for those students– we heard from a few of you that said the students felt like the word problems weren’t realistic. They didn’t reflect the things that were going on in their own lives. Well, make them that way. And here’s another huge tip that’s very helpful is ask your student to create their own word problem, you know what I mean? You can even do a couple of practice ones, give them two numbers to work with and ask them to create a word problem around those numbers and in whatever operations they’ve already mastered, and then let them create their own that has something to do with their own lives. It will be more meaningful to them and then they’ll be able to see how word problems are realistic in their own daily lives. And they can take word problems that are currently in the books and change the nouns and verbs themselves and make them more life reflective for themselves.

Gretchen Roe: 00:21:16.398
And if you see that you have a student who is anxious about word problems, this is the opportunity for you to be able to alleviate that anxiety by helping them begin to craft word problems. Maybe it’s something as simple as taking the word problem that contains information about Lisa and Gretchen and changing those names to your student’s name and one of your student’s friends or siblings. Sometimes just that small change makes all the difference in the world to help a student feel confident. Here’s something that a lot of parents don’t recognize. Math You See word problems are designed to be built with the manipulatives. So the whole purpose of the manipulatives are for us to be able to help a student walk along a continuum from the concrete of using these to the representation of what do I see in my head to the abstract of the Arabic numerals themselves and being able to use the manipulatives to help a child visualize what is happening when you are given four apples and two apples and you’re adding those two apples together– those two sets of apples together makes all the difference in the world for children. One of the places that I think we become anxious– and I have to tell you all, I am the poster child for doing this to my kids. My kids particularly when they were in middle school would say, “Oh, Mom, I’ve got this word problem, I don’t understand.” And I was the parent who said, “Oh, word problems. I hate word problems. All right. Let’s do this.” And what I was doing inadvertently was modeling my anxiety about math for my kids. And so if I can give you one piece of hindsight, advice, look back and do it differently, it is recognize that your math anxiety doesn’t have to be their math anxiety, and this is an opportunity for you to be able to change the game and that is enormous. Lisa, we have so many questions today. So with your permission, I would like to start lobbing them your direction and we’ll take it from here. The first one says– and we’ve already addressed this a little bit. It says, how can I help my daughter make sense of word problems when she feels they never reflect real life well? And how would you recommend that this mom help her daughter see them more accurately

Lisa Chimento: 00:24:04.354
well, first of all, I think that that’s a brilliant thing that a child responds that way and recognizes that something that they’re reading and doing in their book is not reflecting their real life. I think it’s a great opportunity for the conversation and for what we were just mentioning before. That child is already engaging in the process. They have recognized something and they’re communicating it to you. So this is an opportunity to go, “Well, let’s make that reflect your life better. What would you like to see a word problem about? What is something that you’re encountering in your day that involves math or numbers and you’re struggling with it? Let’s turn that into a problem, a word problem, and work it together.” I’m going to share something here that is going to sound crazy. When I was doing Math-U-See with my firstborn and we’re coming through the levels and we got to Gamma and Steve Demme makes the children build rectangles to demonstrate multiplication in a concrete way. That blew my mind because I had been one of those students in school who had a great memory for the facts and formulas but always struggled with the word problems. Gretchen mentioned using the manipulatives, and those manipulatives are often the difference between understanding word problems and not understanding them, particularly for a child who is stronger in that memorization aspect than they are in the concept understanding. If they’re not using the manipulatives, get those manipulatives out and have them start using them because it builds understanding. They can see it and it makes more sense to them. When I was an adult and wanted to go buy carpeting and was asked what the area of my living room was, I could not answer that question. And I was mortified because he was like, “Well, you need to go home and measure your room.” And I thought, “I can measure all day. I’m really good with a tape measure,” but I just didn’t know what to do with the numbers. And when Steve started showing that a multiplication problem could be demonstrated by finding the area of a rectangle, my whole world opened up as an adult. I was in my 30s, and I was teaching my little boy, and it was the first time that I understood that you could find area through multiplication. So if you as an adult are also struggling with these kinds of things, use those manipulatives and let your children use them, even if they’re reluctant to use them. Not all children love it, but even if they’re reluctant, ask them to at least demonstrate one word problem to you with the manipulatives. They will gain a deeper understanding and you will better be able to ascertain that they’ve mastered the work. And so it’s a twofer. Do it. [laughter]

Gretchen Roe: 00:27:01.546
Now, let me also say that this might be a little secret that we often encounter with parents. Parents will say, “Oh, we didn’t use the manipulatives.” And sometimes parents will say to us, “We really struggled. We did all right all the way through the level and then we got to the final test and we really struggled.” And we know at Math-U-See to say, “How often did you do the manipulatives?” and parents will say to us, “Oh, my students don’t like using the manipulatives.” Sometimes it’s not the students. It’s us. It’s our fault. To be honest, we weren’t taught that way. All we remember from our academics is the manipulatives were the thing the teacher pulled out on Friday to give us something to do that was different. And so it’s hard for us to take a paradigm change, wrap our mind around, “We’re really going to learn how to do this with those manipulatives.” But I’m I’m here to tell you all they are the game changer. If you have a child who’s struggling in algebra, it’s likely because they didn’t use the manipulatives in Epsilon. And I see this all the time on social media, and parents will say, “Well, we didn’t use the Epsilon manipulatives. We didn’t need them.” But then they get to algebra and they struggle. And they think algebra is the fault of the struggle. And it’s not because math is sequential and cumulative, and your issues build one upon another. And Margaret has actually inadvertently said something here in the Q&A that makes a lot of sense. She says, “When I went to college, I had a hard time with word problems with algebra. And it was hard to try and explain how to do it since I didn’t know how to do it.” If we allow our children to understand that math is a sequential cumulative process and we give them comfort in the younger years by learning the process, it makes it easier for them. Now, some of you will say, “Well, we didn’t begin math with Math-U-See, so we don’t know how to jump in here.” I stepped into Math-U-See at the pre-algebra level, and it made all the difference in the world for us to be able to pull out those manipulatives and illustrate that process with our kids. I want to turn my attention back to a parent who said, “I need tips. We are major struggling.” And, Lisa, can you talk in general parameters if struggling is part of the math equation at a family’s house? Sometimes it’s not the word problems that are the issue. Can we illustrate that just quickly?

Lisa Chimento: 00:29:47.640
Yeah. Well, first of all, struggle is necessary. Sometimes it’s just plain necessary. And it’s not something that we generally love to embrace, but it’s a good thing because the struggling through something can often bring us the best results. You want to make sure of a couple of things. First of all, that you’re using all of the materials that Math-U-See provided because they were designed to work together. The manipulatives, the video lessons, the written lesson instructions. Secondly, when your student is going through those early workbook pages. I know that this is hard. This is a different paradigm than what’s going on in schools. And so especially for parents who have taken their children out of schools and are used to this setup, or if you’ve been using a different math program that is spiral, grade-based program in all of the lessons are set out for you every day and you’re going, “Well, we’re going to do this on this day and that on that day.” But Math-U-See is not that. Math-U-See uses a mastery approach. And so like Gretchen said, because it’s sequential in cumulative, if you push through at a preset schedule and you set your child to go through at that level and then move on to the next lesson because it’s the next week. But if they haven’t grasped this previous week’s lesson, they are going to start struggling because there’s a gap. A gap has been created because mastery was not ascertained. So first things first, when that student is beginning the lesson practice pages, those first three ABC pages in the workbook, let’s see whether or not there are errors happening. Let’s find out if they’ve mastered it before they even get going into the systematic review pages, make sure they can teach back the concept to you. And that teach-back is huge. If you haven’t heard this before, you can read it in the front of the instruction manual in the how-to-use section. Teaching back is so important, not just for you to be able to ascertain mastery, but for that student to better understand the material when they we have to communicate it back to them. It puts it in their brain in a certain place. It’s deeper understanding and then they can recall it. They can retrieve it when they need to. So make sure that there is teach back happening with the manipulatives when appropriate of that concept before they move into systematic review, then you’re good to go. I have heard from so many parents who let the child go through the workbook pages, the lesson practice, then systematic review, take a test and fail the test. And what I want to say is they shouldn’t even be getting to that test until they have shown you that they’ve mastered the material, and so then they’re encountering a test where they feel confident and they know the material. And the test is almost like– it’s almost inconsequential in some ways. So you want to make sure that mastery has been achieved. If you’re finding that there’s still a struggle, call us. We can do some assessing to help you determine if there’s a gap and where it is. To identify that gap is important because now you know what to go back and review. And then once you filled in that gap, then you can continue forward motion but don’t continue pushing through. It’s like a builder continuing to build a building after he’s found cracks in the foundation. That thing’s going to come down sooner or later. Let’s make sure it doesn’t come down at all by filling in those gaps and giving that student a stable, secure, solid foundation.

Gretchen Roe: 00:33:35.998
Absolutely. And, Lisa, I’d like to address this question because so many parents said it, so I’m going to pull one of these questions because it’s indicative of so many comments that parents made, give us some ways according to this parent that can prevent my son from getting frustrated and writing it right off the rails because they’ve stepped into a word problem, and we’ve provided you all with tools. But I think there’s one element here in all the things we’ve talked about as far as the steps of going through math problems, and that is to back the bus up. If you have a child who’s immediately frustrated because word problems are a part of the equation, it’s time to sit down and have a very honest conversation about where that happened. Often, it happens because we as adults have made suppositions about what a child can do on their own and we have left them to their own devices too soon, and we don’t realize that at the time. We’re doing the very best we can at the time for each child. But then what happens is when we come back through when we grade those papers and we say, “You have this wrong and this wrong and this wrong,” that’s an avenue for frustration if they’re not getting those things correct. So by far, it would be a better experience if you could sit down with your frustrated child and say, “Let’s talk about your frustration and why you feel frustrated and when you feel frustrated.” And one of the things I want to encourage you to do as a parent is connect the physical dots with the emotional dots, where is the frustration happening in their head? Is it happening in their throat? Is their throat getting tight? Is their stomach getting anxious? Is their breathing getting short? Help them learn to recognize the physical signs of frustration so that they can begin to unpack that. And sometimes as parents, that means if I have a child who is in epsilon or zeta and they’re abjectly frustrated with math problems, maybe what I need to do is go back into the digital toolbox into the first three lessons of lower level, pull some word problems that are, as we would think, super easy, but help them see how word problems function so that they can connect the dots, and that can help us alleviate some of that frustration. That’s a terrific way to be able to acknowledge the fact that they’re frustrated. And I’m a good German girl. I want you to do it the way I want you to do it because I said so. But the truth of the matter is, if you’re frustrated, it’s really hard to step around that frustration. So as parents, we have to acknowledge that frustration and sort of revisit it to learn to unpack it. Lisa, what else do you have to add to that?

Lisa Chimento: 00:36:52.802
Yeah. I think that that’s awesome. A couple of practical tips for you here. I’ve talked to a couple of parents where student has forgotten something, and I’ll say, “Okay, let’s look back in their workbook. Back on page 3D–” and they’ll go, “Oh, we threw those away.” Don’t throw the workbook pages away when the student has completed them, because there may be times when you just need to do a little review. And then that’s when you can just pull out problems and give them to review. Word problems can be pulled back out and delivered verbally and then let them work them out. If they have skipped pages– because some families do, if a student has mastered a concept. You feel that they’ve mastered it pretty quickly and maybe you didn’t spend that much time and you’ve skipped some pages, you can go back and do some of those pages for review. Pay attention to the shaded sections on the back of some of those student workbook pages that say quick review or quick tip. Sometimes if students are skipping some of those systematic review pages, they’re skipping those shaded areas, and those are really helpful. Sometimes they’re just review of previous concepts in like a little mini lesson with several sample problems. Sometimes it’s a tip on how to use a previously learned concept in a new application. And that’s important as they’re going forward, because they’re going to need to know how to do that. So those are just a couple of things there. I’m trying to think if there’s something else. Oh, yes. Here’s another one. Okay, so this is just me, because these are my kids. We’re Italian. Food is everything. If my kids are hungry, they’re not going to give you anything good. You need to feed them. Pay attention to what time of the day it is when you’re doing your math work. Pay attention to where you are in your workday when you get to the word problems. Like I said earlier, if they’ve been doing math or other things for a while and you’re starting to see them flag a bit, don’t tackle the word problems then. Let’s take a break. Let’s get something to eat. Let’s go outside. There were times when I would send one of my sons out to run around the house three times because he just needed to move his body. Little kids, they need to move. They can’t be sitting still for too long. So sometimes it’s just little practical things like that. And of course, if they get a chance to move their body, then they’ve created an outlet for some of that anxiety and stress as well. And that’s always a good thing. So if there is anxiety and stress building up, take a break from the work, let them move, let them get something to eat, something to drink, get some rest from it, and even before you have that conversation that Gretchen is suggesting, let this deescalate a bit before you approach that discussion.

Gretchen Roe: 00:39:43.883
Right. Absolutely. And toward that end, I think the thing that is important here is– I said earlier I was the parent who said, “Oh, man, word problems. I really hate word problems.” It’s also important for us as parents to recognize the fact that we can say to our children. You know what? I have done you a disservice by saying to you I dislike these. So let’s collaborate together. Let’s cooperate on that learning journey. And let’s make it better for you than it was for me. And that can make all the difference in the world. I have a really good question here, Lisa, that I would like to address, and although we’re not talking about fact mastery per se in this webinar, I think you can address this question. It says, what if the student understands concepts, but mastery of math facts is difficult due to dyscalculia, which is a learning disability tied to math? Would accommodations be okay to make them? And I’ll let you answer that a little bit.

Lisa Chimento: 00:40:48.398
Right. I mentioned a little earlier that sometimes the reason they’re struggling is because there may be a gap. That gap may be a conceptual understanding, but it may also be a lack of fact mastery. And I would encourage you again to give us a call. We have two courses that have proven to be tremendously successful for children who have, for whatever reason, not been able to or not yet committed the facts to memory. I’m talking about single-digit addition and subtraction facts and multiplication facts. You can see them behind Gretchen, you can see them behind me, aim for addition and subtraction and aim for multiplication. These are accelerated interventions for older students. They are not designed for children that are just beginning to learn those concepts. That would be alpha or gamma. But for kids who already know how and when to add and subtract or how and when to multiply but haven’t yet committed the facts to memory, I think it’s well worth an endeavor to see if you can assist them in doing so. I have had parents who have said to us they can’t memorize those facts. You would be surprised what they can memorize. These courses use multi-sensory activities. They give the brain an awful lot of help in getting those facts into long-term memory, which is key for retrieval. And when you can afford a student that ability to have automatic recall of those facts, it makes solving those problems so much easier because they don’t have to be interrupting the process of solving a multi-step problem by taking their focus out of it to go retrieve the fact and then come back in. Think about a long-division problem. It’s already cumbersome because there’s so many steps to everything they have to do. If they have to keep interrupting that process to go retrieve multiplication and subtraction facts, they lose their place in the process. They make unnecessary errors, and they burn up a lot of brain battery unnecessarily. Then they start getting mentally fatigued. And then they’re making mistakes right and left. And it’s so frustrating and exasperating for them. Let’s see if we can do something about the fact issue with one of the aim courses. It has been successful with children who classically have difficulty with fact recall. And it’s working for them, and it’s making their forward progress successful. They have confidence because it’s putting a tool in their mouth, a tool belt that they didn’t have previously.

Gretchen Roe: 00:43:30.743
Let me give you all an example because, having worked as a special needs consultant here at Demme Learning for almost eight years, I have a child. I have two children with dyslexia. I’m the one who often gets to talk with families with kids with dys: dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia is a very difficult subject. And I am not here as a diagnostician. What I am here is to tell you I have worked with hundreds of families who have had either a formal diagnosis or just an acute suspicion because they have a child who has struggled for years. And I’ve seen kids have success with these two programs. Will they have a 100% fact mastery? No, maybe not. Maybe they’ll never achieve a 100% mastery, but you know what? If you can move the ball 20% for them closer toward fact mastering them wherever they sit today, that’s 20% less of the time they have to step out of a problem to do some sort of computation. And often parents will say to me, “Well, I just gave my student a calculator because they couldn’t recall the facts. So they used the calculator to get to the facts.” Or “I gave them a multiplication chart to get to the multiplication fact answer.” The challenge with that is I will tell you that my two kids who have had challenges have had accommodations for testing through high school. And yeah, can’t get through a standardized test when you’re having to use a calculator to do computational facts. Even with accommodations for time, it’s hard to get there. So it’s up to us as parents to equip our students. Does that mean there’ll be a 100% equipped? Maybe not. But if we could move the ball 20% further toward the goal line as far as fact mastery, then it’s definitely worth an investment of your time. And I’ve learned over the years from enough parents who have told me they have a child with a diagnosis of dyscalculia in their child absolutely can not memorize facts. Or a diagnosis of dyslexia can not memorize facts. And they’ve faithfully implemented the AIM programs with fidelity. They’ve come back to us and said, You know what? It’s made a difference.” And if that makes a difference for your student, then it’s definitely worth exploring. Lisa, I have another question I would like to ask, and I realize we’ve got about ten minutes left here, and we had so many great questions. Let me see if I can get my mouse to cooperate here. When we have a student who is struggling in the G pages– because a couple of parents mentioned this struggle. Can we talk about that application as far as how utilizing the G pages– the wheels don’t come off the wagon at G. So can we talk about what a parent needs to do in order to help a student be successful in those application and enrichment pages?

Lisa Chimento: 00:46:53.412
Yeah. Those G pages are optional, first of all, just to let you know. So sometimes they’re not even very strongly tied to the lesson that they follow. But sometimes they do include a very challenging word problem. I’ve seen some of them and they’re tricky. First of all, there may be an opportunity to put them off a time. I remember when I was doing this with my children and we would encounter a really challenging problem and couldn’t work through it. So there are a couple of things to think about. First of all, struggle through. It’s worth the struggle to give that some time and opportunity. It is okay, in my opinion, anyway – this is up to you, moms and dads, though – to be able to look at the answer. If you’ve struggled through it, you’ve employed everything you could think, you’ve tried all the different ways that you know to solve a problem and you’re still not coming up with a correct answer– to be able to go to those solutions and work it backwards. Sometimes that’s what makes the lightbulb go off. And sometimes that’s all you need is just for that that connection to be made to go, “Okay, now I see what it was I was supposed to do, and why I wasn’t getting there before.” Sometimes it might be worth your while to let the student go forward a couple more lessons. And then come back and revisit that challenging G page with a few more skills under their belt, and a little better critical thinking to be able to put into place for that. That’s my input. I don’t know if you have some additional resource there.

Gretchen Roe: 00:48:35.719
Actually, Lisa, what I want you to do now is talk about how students in algebra, the investment of their time, and how their brain will continue to work on algebra when they’re not actually sitting in front of the book. So this might be helpful for all parents if you’re in the algebra level, or if you’re on your way there, to understand how to be able to approach that understanding.

Lisa Chimento: 00:49:03.665
Yeah, algebra. I love talking about this with families. It’s very often we have kids who have been sailing through the lower levels and they are going great guns and then they get to algebra and it’s like, errrrr! What happened? All of a sudden things get odd. And this is a place where I just would encourage you to slow down. Moms and dads and students, it’s time to practice patience, because there is a process. You are building evaluation skills. You are building critical thinking skills, and it doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen with one lesson. It happens as a part of a process, and that process is really something worthwhile to embrace because it won’t just help them with math, it’s going to help them with everything in their lives if those critical thinking skills are given the time and opportunity to develop and grow. And so in algebra, when you get there, think about this: this is the foundation of what’s coming afterwards, especially if they’re going into a field that will require higher-level math. It is so worth taking their time in algebra and to learn how to think algebraically. You might find that they will need to watch the video lesson, and read the written lesson summary, and then not go forward into the workbook yet. They may need to just stop at the end of that, those two activities for the day, and let their brain go to bed that night and rest and sort and organize that information and then come back and look at it again the next day with a new understanding. Watch the video again if you need to before going into the practice page A. There are only two practice pages in Algebra I. So we’ve lost one. There is one extra practice page available in the digital toolbox, but that’s it. We don’t have a worksheet generator for Algebra I. So don’t let them just fly through those lesson practice pages if they don’t understand what they saw in the video. If your child watched that video and said, “I don’t really get this,” don’t go to the workbook yet. It’s not worth it. Let them come back and look at it again the next day, and do have them read the written lesson instruction. Like I said, it’s set up in a very organized systematic way. It often has additional information and extra sample problems to practice through before trying the lesson practice pages. And take your time with that work, do not rush, and I do recommend not skipping any pages. There is so much content by this point that they’ve built up and they need to be continually reviewing older level concepts because they’re going to be put into new applications, sometimes very abstract applications. And lastly, if you are stuck on a problem, call, we can walk you through it. sometimes you just need to hear somebody else say it in different words and then it clicks. But don’t just keep going and going and going because the confusion will grow.

Gretchen Roe: 00:52:14.110
Let me also give a shout out for the new Algebra 1: Principles of Secondary Mathematics. Often parents will express frustration in our Legacy Algebra 1 product because the dynamic comes up of, we as the parent chose the wrong teach-back problem, or there’s not enough practice, or it was too big an elephant to eat in a particular lesson. And when we developed the Algebra 1: Principles of Secondary Mathematics product, which just debuted a couple of weeks ago, we had the opportunity to hear everything that you all had to say and then apply it in this new program. So if you’ve experienced Algebra 1 in your household and it hasn’t been the stellar experience you wanted it to be, then this new product may be exactly what you’re looking for. It is a different design. It’s a different approach. It’s more material, but broken down more incrementally, and using what we now know – which we did not know in 2009 – but what we now know about the neurology of learning and how kids learn and how kids can apply that learning in their algebraic studies. Learning algebra is not just about learning math and base x. It’s also learning to think mathematically and be able to expand your knowledge base because by the time you get to Algebra 1, math is taught by concept and course, rather than grade level. And that’s a change. It’s a change in your thinking. It’s a change in your students to apply themselves. One of the things that we need to do is to help our kids learn that the right answer is great, but sometimes the wrong answer is better, because where you can work through what you don’t understand, to understanding, gives you a greater depth and breadth of understanding. Lisa, we’re coming up to the top of the hour, which means we’re almost done. And we didn’t nearly get through all the questions we wanted to be able to answer because this really is such a touchstone for so many parents. My question in closing is what would you like to say to parents before we conclude?

Lisa Chimento: 00:54:44.461
Well, first of all, we are here to support you. I think I’ve heard parents express surprise – happy surprise, but surprise – that we do sell curriculum, but we don’t just sell curriculum. We support that curriculum. Everybody who is here at this company has either homeschooled their own children – some of them are currently still homeschooling – and they’ve worked with homeschooling families for a long time. They know the product. If we’re picking up the phone, we can help you. If we’re answering your chat on the live-chat feature on the websites, it’s because we can help you, and we’re here to support you when we want to. So don’t– I mean, like I said, the struggle is worthwhile, but don’t drive yourselves crazy over it. And if you’ve gone a couple of days and you just can’t figure something out, please pick up the phone and give us a call and we’ll be happy to walk you through it. I do want to mention one little thing, and that was something that I thought was important, Sue is not here. Our colleague Sue Wachter is an accomplished artist, and she often speaks to families with very creative children. And sometimes – not always, but sometimes – those children struggle with math in different ways. And one of the things she has recommended particularly is to use the manipulatives. She says when her brain starts going off rabbit trails into creative land, using those manipulatives, she says she can almost feel a change from one side of her brain to the other. And it gets things down into a very concrete place. So having said that, I just want to reiterate. Use the materials that Math-U-See. offers. I know that everyone is wanting to make the best of their money, make the best of their time. But there is a method to the madness. And the materials are there because they work. And they work with children with all different learning preferences and different learning challenges because of the multi-sensory activities, because of how we use the [build rights say?], how we use the teach back. And so all of the pieces work together and they make sense. Please do use the materials as you have them available to you.

Gretchen Roe: 00:57:02.984
Absolutely. We want to thank you all for joining us this afternoon. We hope we’ve answered some questions. If anything comes up post webinar that you think, “Ooh, that was a question you guys didn’t answer and I want an answer to it,” you can, of course, give us a call. You can reach out to us through live chat. You can send us an email. We appreciate your time. We appreciate the fact that you find value in these events. And we’re looking forward to being able to share time with you in the future. And thank you all again for joining us this afternoon. Take care, everyone. Bye.

Lisa Chimento: 00:57:38.985
Bye.
Gretchen Roe: 00:57:41.212
This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show. Thanks for joining us. You can access the show notes and watch a recording at DemmeLearning.com/Show or go on our YouTube channel. Be sure to rate, review, follow, or subscribe wherever you may be hearing this, especially if you really enjoyed it. [music]