Math

What You Need To Know

Individuals with 22q deletion syndrome may have significant visuospatial dysfunction, diminished math attainment, and executive dysfunction.

• Deficits may be seen in areas of nonverbal processing, visual-spatial skills, complex verbal memory, attention, working memory, visual-spatial memory, and mathematics.
• Math learning difficulties in 22q deletion include difficulties in understanding and representing quantities and in accessing the numerical meaning from symbolic digits.
• Individuals may show adequate fact retrieval while development of procedural strategies appears to be delayed.
• Word problems may be a significant area of weakness. They are challenging due to their procedural nature and difficulty in reading comprehension.

Interventions for learning math

• Provide a template for complex or multistep problems; break down the steps
• Help teach the concepts of numeracy and the associations between numbers and quantities. For example using a board game in which the playing pieces are moved around a board.
• Line up the numbers for calculations
• Use active learning to teach concepts, such as baking or cooking to teach fractions
• Help the child learn to apply the information in new circumstances

This information is provided by GEMSS -Genetics Education Materials for School Success: The New England Genetics Collaborative is funded by Cooperative Agreement No. U22MC10980 between the University of New Hampshire and the Health Resources and Services Administration/ Maternal and Child Health Bureau/DSCSHN Genetic Services Branch.  To vistit the GEMMS website CLICK HERE