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There seem to be many problems within the American educational system today. Most of the problems refer back to the differences in the students that undergo the education system. Some of these students are handicapped, some are not motivated either at home or by themselves, and some have learning disabilities. The world of learning disabilities is large and seems to receive the least amount of attention.
Learning disabilities are apparent in some children while in others they remain hidden. One example of a learning disability exists in children that speak languages different from English, which is spoken the most in schools today. Children that speak different languages seem to have the most trouble in math because their memory works differently, their organizational skills are different and they lack the symbolic understanding that English speaking children possess. Psychologists have also found that there is a link to children with language disabilities, their mathematical skills, and their reading skills. This is especially seen in word problems.
When solving story problems, children must understand complex language and solve problems presented in meaningful contexts. (Jordan p. 569) The most apparent problem found amongst children that are language impaired is their symbolic understanding. This weakness is also found amongst children with other disabilities. The main problem with symbolic understanding is that the children do not seem to realize that things can stand for other things. They may fail to come to terms with the notion that one coin can stand for two other coins (Grauberg p. 3) It is understood that children with a problem with symbolic understanding most likely suffer from other learning disabilities.
Such children are most probably learning-impaired in a wider sense, but they are often found in special language units and in special schools for children with language impairments. (Grauberg p. 3) Children who seem to have the most problems with symbolic understanding are the ones that are known as being semantic or pragmatic. These types of children are able to use the symbols that are numbers and letters. However, they can only use them as they learned them causing the children to be unable to see the symbols as constructs which, only stand for a meaning. In general, such children will have difficulty in applying acquired number skills to new situations. (Grauberg p. 4) Some children with very large problems in language development seem to just give up on learning mathematical skills at a very early age. Here the problem of teacher interaction becomes a problem because if the teachers do not spend a lot of time helping and introducing the concepts of symbols to these students at very young ages the students will give up at fail at math later in the future.
These children tend to become distracted very easily by their surroundings. Another problem found in the symbolic understanding is that the children may know a counting system very different to the one that they are learning at their present school. The confusion of the two number systems can be extremely large. children will have difficulty in accommodating their own, more global and non-verbal working symbol system (Grauberg p. 6) There are ways to help these children with learning mathematics. First, one must begin by concentrating on the cardinal aspect to numbers. Here the relationship between linguistic form and the content in small and simple.
Some suggest working with terms that are in relation to numbers and amounts such as a little or a few. Before precisely specified quantities like three or four are introduced, it may be useful to work with large nonspecific quantities. (Grauberg p. 9) The next step is to have the child associate specific amounts to the numbers such as five apples or seven shirts. Then, one should introduce the written symbols to the children. Some specialists believe that children should write the number and understand that before they speak the number. They suggest that the children will become familiar with the notion that a quantity can be labeled in writing (Grauberg p 15). Another issue that children with language developmental problems have is organization.
The problem of organization relates itself to the other problems found in the children. A child with added language difficulties will have even greater problems because the strategy of talking a problem through while solving it- essential for most of us when organizing a problem solving situation- will not come naturally to him. (Grauberg p. 61) Much like children with problems having to do with symbiotic understanding the children with organizational problems will be learning impaired in a much larger sense because while they may look or act as though they understand their work shows that they do not. Teachers can also use patterns to help them learn the symbols. The patterns strategy requires students to examine sequences of numbers or geometrical objects in search of some rule that will allow them to extend the sequence indefinitely. (Thomas p. 204) Children who have problems with organizational skills have many features. The features are impulsiveness, lack of concentration, clumsiness, and lack of spatial ability.
The impulsiveness is seen when the children continue to test their parents or teachers patience. They will not look further into given information, and they can not sort out the relevant from the irrelevant information. Just as in problems in symbolic understanding if the child does not understand the information or process it quickly enough they begin to show signs of a lack of concentration. Children so clumsiness because research has shown that children with a lack of organization physical movements seem slow and they appear to have no rhythm. This results in untidiness and a lack of clarity (Grauberg p. 62). Children with this issue have problems with math because they have problems sequencing, halving, sharing, and classifying the numbers.
Children need to learn how to explore the various possibilities of grouping in order to make more efficient decisions having to do with organizing themselves. The main problem within the organizational problem is trying to sort out word problems. The relations between the numbers and words must be understood before the problem itself can be solved. Word problems are very complex even at the easiest level. some knowledge is needed...
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