[Blindmath] intro

[Susan Mooney]

I think "le" hit the nail on the head with math anxiety and I think a lot of math anxiety is caused by the teachers themselves not having a firm grasp of the subject and/or not knowing how to teach period.  In particular, there are some teachers of the blind in the regular public schools who do not know how to teach math to a blind kid and leave out some very important concepts or rely on rote memorization of facts.  Manipulatives are reserved for the younger kids and for some reason many teachers feel that manipulatives aren't needed beyond the primary grades K-3.  They don't take into account learning styles either.  I'm 56 years old and I still learn better if I can take it apart and/or use manipulatives!  If these foundations aren't laid down in the early grades and the kid is pushed through and begins to fail test after test or at the very best does poorly in math but "passes", then it just snowballs.  I really didn't grasp most of what I learned in math until I had to teach it to blind kids myself and then I had huge "aha moments"!

Back to "le", even if you don't have a great grasp of Nemeth, you can still work with manipulatives and with raised lines. You can get fancy with puff papers or you can simply use Wikki Stix or pipe cleaners although I think they're calling them "chenille sticks" now!!) I found many of my kids benefited from the use of the Cranmer abacus. I'm sure others here will have many other fabulous ideas; these are just rudimentary things that are falling out of my head right now.  The resource teacher should be able to let you know what each kid's strengths and weaknesses are and I bet you can run with it from there.

Susan M.