Math Interventions for Students with Learning Disabilities: A Literature Review

1. Math Interventions for Students with Learning Disabilities: A Literature Review Kristin Haeger, BA YeonKyung Lee, BA Sheri Berkeley, PhD The University of Georgia (Cass, Cates, Smith, & Jackson, 2003)

2. Introduction • Students with LD who struggle in math have problems with content, self-esteem issues, and intellectual barriers (Montague, 1992). • For math word problems, students with LD also have problems with reading comprehension (Jitendra, Hoff, & Beck, 1999). • Imagine that you could not understand what you were reading while trying to solve a math problem. How would you try to solve the problem in the next slide?

3. Practice Word Problem 과일 샐러드를만드는데, 사과 5개와오렌지 2개가 필요합니다. 만약, 레이가 35개의 사과를 과일 샐러드를 만드는데 사용한다면, 얼마나 많은 오렌지가 필요할까요? How would you solve this problem? Give it a try!

4. What’stheanswer? • How did you go about solving the problem? (If you want to see the solution, the answer is the last slide)

5. Solving Word Problems Students who struggle with math will arbitrarily pull the numbers from the problem and use arithmetic to manipulate the numbers to solve the problem, rather than analyzing the problem and thinking through which strategy to use to solve the problem.

6. How Students with LD Solve Word Problems Oftentimes, students with LD who struggle with math may have compounded problems when asked to solve math word problems that require both math problem-solving and reading comprehension skills (Jitendra, Hoff, & Beck, 1999).

7. Purpose • The purpose of this paper is to conduct an extensive literature review on different intervention strategies used on students with learning disabilities for math facts and word problem solving. • Examines the relationship between math facts and word problems. • Compares and contrasts different interventions that have been used with students with learning disabilities who struggle in math, and identifies which interventions have effectively impacted student learning. • Interventions: cognition, metacognition, teaching modeling, guided practice, schema-based strategy, manipulatives, and visual aids.

8. Method • A computerized search of online databases: PsycINFO and ERIC. • Keywords: learning disabilities, mathematics, math, mathematics numeracy, dyscalculia, mathematical facts, mathematical computation, word problem solving, problem solving, intervention, and instruction. • Hand search: Learning Disabilities Research and Practice and Journal of Learning Disabilities. • Ancestral and descendent searches

9. Inclusion Criteria In order to be included in this literature review, the following criteria needed to be met: • Published between 1992 and 2008 • Math facts: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division • Math word problems • Elementary and Middle School students • Had to include students with learning disabilities

10. Results: Elementary • Interventions • Direct instruction with a teacher modeling and giving corrective feedback • Perceptual visualizations • Semantic relationships • Cognitive and metacognitive strategies • Schema-based strategies • Curriculum Focus of Interventions • Basic computation skills • Math fluency • Math word problems

11. Results: Middle School • Interventions • Manipulatives • Cue cards • Mnemonic devices • Diagrams • Schema-based strategy (Cass, Cates, Smith, & Jackson, 2003) • Cognitive and Metacognitive strategy • Curriculum Focus of Interventions • Equivalencies • Manipulations of whole and partial numbers through the use of fractions • Perimeter/area problem-solving • Word problems

12. Elementary: Math Facts

13. Elementary: Word Problems

14. Middle School: Math Facts

15. Middle School: Word Problems

16. Discussion • Since the passage of NCLB and IDEIA legislation, research-based interventions are more important to the education of students than ever before. This is particularly true for students with learning disabilities who have additional challenges to learning. • This review of literature highlights effective practices in math for this population of students. • The literature indicates that regardless of whether working with math facts or word problems, students with LD benefitted from explicit instruction.

17. Discussion Math facts interventions that were most effective • Comprehensive approach • Integrating cognitive and metacognitive strategies • Elementary • Instructional sequences, mnemonic devices, and strategy instruction • Middle School • Manipulatives paired with modeling • Prompting, guided practice, and independent practice • LAP fractions

18. Discussion Word problem interventions that were found to be most efficacious: • Schema-based interventions were most effective with both elementary and middle school students with LD • Examples: Jitendra & Hoff, 1996; Jitendra, DePipi, & Perron-Jones, 2002; Xin, Jitendra, Deatline-Buchman, 2005.

21. Further Inquiries Please contact: Yeon Kyung Lee specialp@uga.edu Kristin Haeger khaeger@uga.edu Dr. Sheri Berkeley sberkele@uga.edu

22. Problemanswer “A fruit salad recipe calls for 5 apples and 2 oranges. If Ray wants to use 35 apples, how many oranges does he need?” 35 / 5 = 7 7 * 2 = 14 The answer is 14 oranges.