[senco-forum] Numeral formation

Does anyone have any sheets or ideas to teach/practise numeral formation

Techniques used for writing letters should work just as well with writing
numerals:

use wooden letters from John Lawrence so that the orientation is learned
kinaesthetically

The pupil lays out numbers 1-10.  You can see which ones they
reverse/invert.

Find a wooden numeral in a cloth bag and id it without looking at it.

Get them to write the numbers in a salt tray (one of those water catching
trays from an oblong plant pot does the trick and is cheap).

Make numerals out of playdoh sausages.  Check against wooden numerals or a
printed flashcard or a printed number  line.

write over yours.

sky write (write an imaginary numeral n the air)

write on someone's hand/back etc

trace with tracing paper

write in different mediums: vertical chalkboard gives best sensory feedback
according to an OT

use the foldover technique - you write a number and say it.  Then fold the
paper down and the pupil does the same in the space underneath.  S/he then
opens the paper up to check if the number is formed correctly.  and refolds
and rewrites in space underneath - etc etc.

Pace it to the pupil's learning speed.

Be aware of blocks to learning:

I read about a teenage student who just had not been able to write his
letters correctly, no matter how hard his teachers had tried to help him.
In the end someone said please swim them in the pool.  He did and came back
and wrote them correctly.

which comes back to sensory integration and the references I posted in my
previous mail.  Here's another case history:

I had a student who was diagnosed as fitting the criteria for dyslexia.  His
verbal IQ was at the 60th percentile.  his performance was at the 10th.  His
statement/ep assessment from the USA recommended, amongst other things:

Speech and language therapy
occupational therapy
literacy support (he could not read or write at all - he was entering our
Year 2).

The parents signed him up for SALT, OT and dyslexia teaching at our
request.   We also had a shadow with him all the time as his processing
speed was so slow that when the teacher said "Girls please go the toilet."
he stood up to go too.  SALT, OT, class teacher, shadow and us in the
dyslexia unit liaised.  The shadow sat in on all my lessons.  He became,
slowly, oh so slowly but steadily and surely a reader and a writer.  By Y4
he had come on miles from his previous assessment, but was still trailing
his peers.  He left us to go to a specialist dyslexia school in Key Stage 2
and on a visit back to me read our children's stories off our display board
to me with fluency.  He was bright in my lessons if it did not involve
reading and writing - for example, we were looking at i for igloo.  We
looked igloos up on the web as he did not know what they were.  Once he had
the concept however he wanted to know how people kept warm, how they made
fires and if they lived in all that ice and snow how did they START the
fire.  The latter question had never occurred to me!

He could not visualise shapes at all when we started.  He could not cross
the midline.  His OT covered bilateral integration and sensory integration
and we got a boy from that who we could teach.  The SALT advised to only do
one letter a week - sound, shape etc.  so we did each letter intensively,
one letter per week.  He tried to use some avoidance strategies in our
lessons but with heaps of positive reinforcement he survived his
underachievement and is now a wonderful young man who can.

Hope that helps.

Philippa

On Nov 24, 2007 12:05 AM, Mary Kelly <mary.kelly4 at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> Does anyone have any sheets or ideas to teach/practise numeral formation
> please?
> Thanks,
> Mary
>
>
>