[blindkid] Elementary math question

Thu Oct 3 12:52:52 UTC 2013

Hi, As both a blind adult and teacher I say absolutely she needs both of these things. The number line is an order of numbers and is just as important. She still needs to understand how she gets from number to number and why we do what we do to get to these places. She needs to see the number spaces between numbers. When it is time for negative numbers the number line down from 0 will be very helpful. I found the hundreds chart very helpful as a kid, and as a blind teacher. Now while it isn't as useful just on a piece of paper I recommend Brailling the numbers 1-100 on small cards that are all the same size. Then put magnet or Velcro on the backs and put them on a surface they can stick to. This way she can manipulate the numbers just as the sighted children are. So it won't be helpful for her to color all the numbers with 2 red, but she can either take them off the chart, or put manuplitives on the numbers the others are coloring. It is actually in my opinion even more important that she learn how the numbers work, how the correspond with one another as she will naturally end up doing more in her head than other children.

There is no part of the math program that should ever be left out. The only way something should ever be left out is if it is ok to leave it out for the other 30 kids. If the answer is yes than you may know it is ok to leave it out for your daughter. If the other kids are practicing a skill in a visual way say a coloring sheet where they color in the right answer your daughter could have a math practice sheet where answers correspond with letters that will get a fun phrase instead of a picture in the end.

Please keep asking away. www.tsbvi.edu is a great math resource.

Bran

-----Original Message-----
From: blindkid [mailto:blindkid-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Debby B
Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2013 7:26 PM
To: Blind Kid Mailing List, (for parents of blind children)
Subject: Re: [blindkid] Elementary math question

One thing that REALLY helped Winona was when we convinced the school to pull out the MathWindow. We were able to set things up, for example fractions. Once we set them up vertically it was like the light bulbs came on!

Debby
bwbddl at yahoo.com

~"Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can read."~Mark Twain

________________________________
 From: b&s <lanesims at gmail.com>
To: blindkid at nfbnet.org 
Sent: Wednesday, October 2, 2013 7:27 AM
Subject: [blindkid] Elementary math question

Emilia is now in 4th grade. I have been going in occasionally to help/observe during gen ed math time. I have always understood that the teaching of math (and all subjects for that matter) is vision centric. This is just a fact of life and I've been under the impression that teaching a blind kid is just a matter of tweaking the same information that is taught to the sighted kids. However, What struck me yesterday was the possibility that entire portions of the math curriculum may be fundamentally dependent on a visual approach, so that the issue becomes one, not of transcribing, but of truly translating the concepts to an entirely different language….and possibly even throwing out portions of the curriculum. This came up while thinking about number lines. Number lines figure heavily in the teaching and testing at this level. Emilia has a brailled number line at school that does a reasonable job of transcribing the visual information. She can read the
 number line and mimic what other kids are doing with some effort. My question is whether a brailled number line is really useful to a congenitally blind student to help with understanding the underlying concepts?….or does it just make us sighted folk feel good about seeing the blind kid do the same thing the sighted kids are doing? Is she really learning the material?

Unless I'm missing something, the abacus seems to cover the same territory and more as the number line. I don't even know how to approach the notion of the hundreds chart, which again, is available in braille, but is it really useful? If the answer is no, then there is the question of how to approach the issue of class participation, when everyone else is using these tools and concepts. 

I plan to talk to a couple of congenitally blind adult friends to get their perspective on this stuff. Any enlightenment from parents and others here would be great also. 

Thanks, Brandon
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