What is dyscalculia?
Dyscalculia is a developmental difficulty in working with numbers. It is more than finding maths difficult or low attainment at school, it is a difficulty comprehending numbers and quantities that persists over time. It is thought to affect between 3% and 6% of the population – or about one child in every class. People with dyscalculia have difficulty saying which of two numbers is bigger, estimating, judging whether an answer is reasonable, remembering number facts, telling the time or following directions. They are also likely to find subsitizing difficult – this is the key mathematical skill of recognising how many there are without counting, for example seeing at a glance that there are six spots on the dice. Difficulty with this in the early years of school is one of the first indicators a child may have dyscalculia. It may be that people with dyscalculia lack a mental model of a number line that supports an understanding of the number system.
Is dyscalculia new?
The term dyscalculia was first used in the 1950s but the condition still isn’t widely understood. The name itself comes from Latin and Greek words and means ‘counting badly’. It has had far less attention than dyslexia, which is a related but a distinctly different condition. Recent brain imaging studies revealed that people with dyscalculia have structural and functional differences in the brain region crucial for number processing.
Is it more common in people with dyslexia?
There is a significant overlap between people with dyslexia and with dyscalculia. Dyslexia affects reading, writing and spelling whereas dyscalculia affects numbers sense and numeracy. Many of the challenges with executive function, such as working memory and processing speeds present similar challenges, but they are different conditions. Children with neurodevelopmental conditions such as ADHD and Autism may also be more likely to have dyscalculia.
How does dyscalculia affect people?
Dyscalculia can present many challenges for children and adults in their daily lives. It can make it difficult to remember numbers, judge the reasonableness of a price, keep to a budget, tell the time, stick to a schedule, take measurements or follow recipes. Dyscalculia can also have an emotional impact; finding all of these things more difficult than their peers can impact a child’s confidence and self-esteem. Dyscalculia is different to maths anxiety but can often trigger it. Maths anxiety is an emotional response to numbers – it can change over time and result in mathematical performance being very different depending on context and stress levels. Dyscalculia, however, is persistent from early childhood and difficulties with numbers are evident in all situations. As well as making the mathematics of daily life difficult, these challenges can make people with dyscalculia particularly vulnerable to financial problems and exploitation and can reduce opportunities.
How can teachers and parents support children with dyscalculia?
There are many strategies to support learners with dyscalculia. Helping children to develop number awareness and flexibility from a young age will help build strong foundations for the understanding of the number system. Ways of working that may help include:
- Engaging different senses in maths learning – visual representations, sound, movement and touch
- Giving children lots of opportunities to use real objects and manipulatives to support their thinking
- Providing lots of repetition of key skills
- Applying maths to practical contexts and real world situations
- Avoiding rote memorisation
- Reducing emphasis on speed
It is also really important to help learners with dyscalculia build their resilience, confidence and a growth mindset to avoid developing anxiety around maths.
How do our activities support learners with dyscalculia?
Our activities are designed to be fun. They support families to build habits of talk, play and exploration and together build positive attitudes to maths. Many activities encourage families to use toys and other household objects to do maths, while others involve movement and physical activity. Role play, drawing or cooking are multi sensory and show mathematics in many different contexts. Taking maths out and about into gardens, streets and parks removes the pressure of paper and pencil calculations and encourages families to explore the mathematical ideas in the world around them – looking for numbers, counting steps or collecting pinecones all reinforce children’s number sense. Spotting shapes, creating patterns, estimating distances or finding symmetry support the development of spatial awareness.
Playing maths games and solving puzzles leads to lots of repetition of key skills in a relaxed and engaging way. Also, the videos that explain the main ideas or concepts in a topic can be watched again and again if necessary. These approaches to maths are valuable for all learners but may be particularly beneficial for those with the additional challenges of dyscalculia.
Finally, our Money Skills programme gives children lots of opportunities to build their confidence with money and practice using it in real situations. This is an area that learners with dyscalculia often find particularly challenging; learning and practicing these skills early could be particularly beneficial.
