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Assisting students with learning disabilities

26 July, 2019 - 10:10
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There are various ways to assist students with learning disabilities, depending not only on the nature of the disability, of course, but also on the concepts or theory of learning guiding you. Take Irma, the girl mentioned above who adds two-digit numbers as if they were one digit numbers. Stated more formally, Irma adds two-digit numbers without carrying digits forward from the ones column to the tens column, or from the tens to the hundreds column. Exhibit 2 shows the effect that her strategy has on one of her homework papers. What is going on here and how could a teacher help Irma?

    Directions: Add the following numbers.

Figure 5.1 Irma's math homework about two-digit addition
Three out of the six problems are done correctly, even though Irma seems to use an incorrect strategy systematically on all six problems.