Helping Your Elementary Student With Math

DD hates math.   Although she has known instinctively how to solve complicated oral word problems for more than a year, and she tests more than 2 grades above her age level, when she see a sheet of math problems its not too uncommon to have to drag her limp and protesting body off the floor and to have to cajole her into starting.  This is because when the brain with ADHD looks at a sheet of problems, it does not have the skills to break the task down and organize itself to go at it step by step until it is done.

So this is what we do to help her:

1)  Present only one problem at a time.  Usually I cover up the other problems with post it notes.
2)  If problems require small handwriting, we copy the problem on to large graph paper.   Another possibility is to choose a curriculum that does not require a lot of writing, such as Right Start Math, or that comes with enlarged problems, such as Centre for Innovation in Teaching's MEP.
3)  Sometimes we take dictated answers.  Only allow this if your teacher says it is fine, otherwise your child will get in trouble for not doing the work.  Its best to get it written into your accommodations.
4)  Do an example problem together (if there are multiple similar problems in a problem set).  Break a multi-step problem down into steps and walk your child through.  See if they can guess which step could be done next, but if they can't then help them figure it out.
5)  Avoid curriculum with cartoons and distracting colorful pictures.  If you go to public school, you really can't do anything about this.  If you home school, you can.
6)  We also do a little math unschooling.  We pick out books from the library that have math content (such as Life of Fred, Adventures in Math, and the Sir Cumference series) and do that for a few days to break things up and also to show how math is used in the real world.

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