Math Articles by David Berg, E.T.

Articles About MMR

Living with Dyslexia: Are Math Programs the Answer?

My son was diagnosed with a “math disability” and dyslexia at the age of 8. Like most everyone I talk to, we spent way too many years struggling. I’d been Googling reading and math issues for three years trying all sorts of things to help him. Finding reading intervention was a lot easier than finding math intervention. In all that searching I learned the best way to teach math was through a multisensory program. I literally spent thousands of dollars on very popular multisensory programs. I bought at least four of them as well as several online game-based “drill and kill” subscriptions—each new program promising to fix the issues with cute dots, number lines, gimmicky games, you name it, and I believed the promises. I. Was. So. Naive.

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More About Making Math Real
by Ashley K. Koedel, M.A., Director of Educational Services

Making Math Real™, often referred to as MMR, is a structured, multi sensory method of teaching math in which all processing modalities are used at the same time. In other words, whenever concepts and skills are taught, the student is simultaneously using their visual, auditory, and motor processes.

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Articles by David Berg, E.T. (also From the Desk of…)

Addressing The Common Core State Standards

NEW ARTICLE: There has been a great deal of controversy surrounding the political and educational ramifications of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Amidst the highly charged exchanges on all sides regarding the damages/benefits of the CCSS, there has been little expressed that would provide direct and immediate support for the principal stakeholders: students and their teachers. What can be done immediately to resolve or at least ameliorate this seemingly insurmountable conflict?

The reality for some students that math can be persistently difficult and overwhelming is hardly newsworthy. As educators and parents (and for us as well when we were kids) we continue to experience the exclamations of frustrated students, “I hate math,” “Math is boring,” “I’m dumb, I’m stupid, I’ll never be good at math,” “What’s the point of this stuff – when will I ever need to use parabolas in my life?”

All math content presented in the elementary grades is intended to provide the specific development and tools necessary to support successful algebraic processing in middle school and high school. Over the previous 34 years I have worked with well over 10,000 students of all ages and processing styles, and in my experience, the most valuable math tool students acquire in the elementary grades is the development of automaticity with the multiplication and division facts.

How many times have I heard exasperated students exclaim, “I hate fractions!” Even students who feel math is easy often claim, “Yeah, that other stuff is pretty easy, but I’m really bad at fractions – oh, and decimals, too.” Fractions are challenging, and are estimated to have an 80% failure rate nationwide . . .

Students with math anxiety do not lack the intelligence or the motivation to be successful. Typically, they lack the underlying development that supports the acquisition of the basic tools to do math. For example, a significant number of students who struggle with math have a “big picture”learning style that enables them to do well with reading comprehension, the conceptual side of math, and other learning activities that create pictures in the mind.

“I’m dumb in math!” “I’m never going to use this stuff,” Math is stupid!” “I HATE MATH!” More heartfelt sentiments have probably never been expressed. Students who struggle in math, especially now during this phase of inappropriate acceleration we see in the schools, experience undue stress and anxiety on a daily basis.

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