[blindkid] Math for Kindergarten

[Arielle Silverman]

Hi all,
As a blind adult and lifelong Braille reader I absolutely and totally
agree with all the above. She should be learning to read and write
numbers at the same time her sighted classmates learn, or before they
do, but definitely not after. There is no harm in teaching or exposing
a child to something before she is ready to perform perfectly at it,
but there can be a lot of harm in waiting until she has fallen behind.
Given the difficulties in getting accessible materials, pull-outs etc.
a blind child needs to be ahead of the game as much as is possible.
My father has a math degree, and when I was young he liked to talk to
me a lot about numbers and computations. I recall when I was about
four, sitting on his lap and him trying to teach me about
multiplication. I was still in preschool, was barely learning to read
and definitely didn't understand what he was talking about. Yet when I
got to elementary school and my class was learning about
multiplication, the ideas seemed familiar and I caught on right away.
Although I wasn't developmentally ready to multiply in my head when my
dad first introduced me to the concept, the exposure primed me to
grasp the ideas more easily when I was developmentally ready for them.
He could have just said "I'll wait until she is older to teach her
about this, she won't understand" but he went ahead and exposed me to
the concepts anyway. As a result, I didn't struggle with math and in
fact was able to succeed in advanced math classes, and I don't think
this was an accident or the result of innate intelligence. I will
never forget this experience because it shows that early exposure to
intellectual challenges can be incredibly beneficial for later growth
and success. And this is especially true for blind kids in
mainstreamed classrooms who face access disadvantages.
Unfortunately many TVI's seem to subscribe to the model of waiting
until a student is clearly ready to master a concept before
introducing it. This way of thinking is not unlike the tendency to
wait to teach Braille until a child clearly has no other choice. But a
good teacher needs to anticipate what comes ahead-and to have a little
faith in their students.
Also, while I am not a Braille teaching expert, I would think that a
child could easily learn literary numbers and Nemeth code at the same
time-much as an infant can learn to speak English and Spanish at the
same time. Or, if your TVI is really worried that your daughter will
get confused by writing in Nemeth, why not have her write the numbers
in literary Braille first-but still have her write them down like the
other students?
Best,
Arielle

On 1/3/12, Wendy Molle <wmolle at schoharie.k12.ny.us> wrote:
> Unless a child has developmental delays, they should absolutely be doing
> Nemeth math when the peers are doing written math.  Sighted children learn
> the many different ways that a letter can be formed (a versus a versus A,
> for example) as well as cursive or script eventually.
>
> If they don't keep her up with her peers, exactly when do they plan to catch
> her up?  With all of the pullouts our blind kids have a school (TVI, OM,
> etc.), there is hardly extra time to catch them up later.
>
> Make it a game at home.  Buy dominoes and put the Nemeth numbers on them.
> Then play dominoes together.
>
> Good luck,
> Wendy
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