Jonily : The reason this is so powerful for our students that
have any type of learning disability or any type of
disconnect, such as ADD and ADHD, is it's accessible. Hi.
Cheri Dotterer: I'm Cheri dotterer Here at tier one
interventions podcast. Today's episode was recorded about two
years ago in an evening workshop that we did. I have taken an
excerpt from that workshop, and I want to share it with you
tonight. The full episode, you will get to know a little bit
more about at the end of the podcast, so make sure you stick
around to the end to find out how to learn more. For now,
let's listen in and hear what jonily teaching about quick
DUTs.
Jonily : Cheri and I have been collaborating on her expertise,
which is neuroscience and occupational therapy, my
expertise, which is the mathematics and what you're
going to get tonight from us, is not going to be content that you
see on Saturday mornings, if you come to Saturday math, or if
you've been a part of any of those opportunities that we've
had, we are taking a deep dive into how to enhance the
complexity of mathematics with our most struggling learners.
Now we're also focusing on students with disabilities,
dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia, and what the
disconnect is in their brain and how quick dots and we'll tell
you what a quick.is but if you've been around me, you know
what a quick.is how quick dots will connect that disconnection
in the brain through lots of the therapies that Sherry's can
teach you and then enhance the mathematics that I'm going to
show you tonight. We are excited to combine both of our expertise
and bring to you a combination of what we both teach, and this
is for K through 12, even preschool and higher ed. So
we're going to extend the math all the way beyond. And I will
also give you examples of how I use this mathematics with all of
my levels, kindergarten through high school.
Cheri Dotterer: I bring in the neuroscience every time I look
at the purple X, all I see is the visual perception and the
visual motor. It has been a journey to try and learn how to
connect it to me. I had to slip this one in tonight. Just as I
was getting ready to come upstairs to my computer, my
husband flipped on Fox News after we were done with supper
to this report that said, in Philadelphia, 23% of fourth
graders are proficient in math, and 29 are proficient in
Chicago, that was on the Bret Baier show. I tried to look up
the link, but because he was still alive and online and
didn't have chance to take that anywhere else, that was what he
said. I don't know where he got those statistics, but that's
what my husband told me. I missed it, but that's what I was
told tonight. But when you really think about that, 23% of
fourth graders are proficient in math. What? All I gotta say is,
what? And
Jonily : I think if you look nationally, urban versus rural
versus suburban, these I'm a I'm assuming are urban numbers. I
don't know. I'm assuming these are urban numbers, and typically
you get an average for suburban numbers and rural numbers.
However, in any of the numbers based on any reports that
typically come out, we are not seeing steady increases in math
over time. And as a matter of fact, there are inconsistencies
in the increases and oftentimes decreases in the number of
proficient based on a wide range of worldwide and national
assessments. Obviously, you're here tonight. We have struggles
in mathematics. I'll give you another statistic of students
that have dyslexia, of students that have dyslexia, about 40% of
those students could possibly have a math learning disability
as well. Math Learning Disability being called
dyscalculia. Dyscalculia research is 20 to 25 years
behind where dyslexia is. So although we've made some gains
in reading, some gains in reading, there's still some
controversy and some gains with our dyslexia students. I don't
even think we've hit the tip of where we need to be, and we
definitely have not done that in mathematics. And I will say
until now, what Sherry and I have done together with our work
has been leading. Leading the way for dyscalculia,
specifically in this country and we're hoping around the world.
What you're going to hear tonight is very cutting edge,
very new and ahead of the curve. So very exciting for you to be
here tonight. But I want to say to preface this evening is I
myself have my own action research statistics from
multiple projects I've done over the past 18 years, and in our
statistics, I'll give you a couple of examples with a sixth
grade cohort group. We took them with the model that we're
presenting to you tonight. We took those students in less than
a year, from 27% passing their fifth grade state math
assessment to 60% passing the very next year, and 92% showing
growth. We saw a significant increase as they moved to
seventh and eighth grade. It was a school that had a lot of
transient students, but of the students that were still at the
building, it was a title building, we saw a steady
increase from the kids of that cohort. I also am a part of a
recent project with current fifth graders that I have been
using this model with since they've been in kindergarten.
This has been an amazing project, and the data that we
have on standardized tests is that this cohort of students has
broken the bell curve. When you look at math achievement on a
standardized assessment, you're looking at percentile rankings.
50th percentile is average of this cohort of students that
started in kindergarten, the lowest percentile on the math
portion of the standardized test was 71st percentile. Now, if you
know anything about that, that is all on the far right side of
the bell curve, past the peak of the bell curve. If you look at a
bell curve, the peak of it, the center, is 50th percentile. So
these students were all high achieving. But when you look at
their cognitive ability scores, their cognitive ability scores
ranged anywhere from 87 to a couple of them in the gifted
range, at 132, 141, this is exciting action based research.
What we're going to share with you tonight is one of our
interventions, and that is a quick.we have multiple types of
interventions tonight. We're going to focus on the quick dot,
and we want to know how to expose more mathematics out of
these struggling students so that it becomes habitual and a
way of life for them. We are just excited to bring this to
you. If you've not seen a quick dot before, we're going to show
you the next set of dots for about four seconds. We're going
to show you in two different ways, one with the grid behind
it, one without the grid. So two seconds each, and at the end, I
want you to type in the chat. How many dots Did you see? Is
Cheri Dotterer: everybody ready? Here we go. How
Jonily : many dots Did you see? Do the reason this is so
powerful for our students that have any type of learning
disability or any type of disconnect, such as ADD and
ADHD, is it's accessible. One of the takeaways I want us to have
by the end of today is I want mathematics to be accessible yet
complex at the same time. It's very purposeful that I use the
same quick dots over and over again, because when we use the
same task over again with multiple grade levels, with the
same students. That's how we're going to get our students with
disabilities, interactions over time. Our gifted students need
one to two interactions before they have forever learning. They
know it forever. Our bright kids who play the school game, they
achieve well, but they're not necessarily identified as
gifted. Might need five to seven interactions before they know it
forever. And our students with disabilities and our struggling
students are at risk. Students, mathematically, might need 66
zero to 100 interactions. How do we get more interactions over
time? By using the same quick dots again and again, tonight,
we're going to show how the complexity of mathematics can
happen much earlier than middle school, specifically in first
and second grade. You're going to be blown away a little bit
with the mathematics. However, it's important that you
understand the mathematics. You are telling me 72 you see the
overlaps. You see the three by three grids. That is beautiful.
One of the deficiencies for our students that have learning
disabilities is the struggle with estimation and math facts.
When we're facilitating a quick dot, you're going to do it
exactly like I did. I'm going to show you this for four seconds.
Take it away. The. Reason you have these facilitation slides
where these the border is light, is to remind you that at this
point you could do a turn and talk for students to talk to
each other about how the dots were arranged. For all of you
right now, go ahead and type in the chat. Kate already did this,
but type in the chat how you saw the dots arranged. I want to
share why this is so essential with students. We're not
necessarily solving anything here. What we're doing here is
we are extracting student perspective. Part of student
motivation and engagement is about feeling a sense of
belonging and feeling like I'm able to achieve what an exercise
like this does is changes the mindset. I don't have to teach
fixed or growth mindset or whatever climate and culture I
want to create in my classroom. I don't have to teach that. I
can just provide a task that's going to give kids a sense of
belonging, a sense that she cares, what I think, a sense of
accessibility. Most importantly, aside from the mathematics, we
want to tap into those positive emotions, this reaches over into
Sherry's expertise, which negative emotion hinders the
ability to learn? The quick dot you saw was the image for stage
three. What we're going to show you now are images for stage
two. I get this question many times, and the question is, why
don't you start with stage two, with students with disabilities?
Because there are fewer dots and it will be easier for them. I
want to answer that in a couple of different ways, because
that's an important question. Number one, if we begin with
something too trivial, and students feel like they get it
incorrect, then their mentality is, I can't even get the easy
one. In my experience delivering a more complex but easily
accessible stimulus, like this quick.in stage three, and
especially if I'm giving this to a whole class of students, and
not just my students that I pulled for intervention, I can
naturally differentiate, because with the complexity of stage
three, my gifted or higher level students really have equal
access with My lower level students, if the higher level
students are struggling with it, then look at the mentality shift
that takes with our lower level students. Oh my gosh. Johnny
always gets these problems, but this time, Johnny wasn't quite
sure. This is really cool, because I may have guessed
better than Johnny. This is a complete shift in prompting to
level the playing field for all ability levels of students, and
I can't stress that enough. I
Cheri Dotterer: love what Nicole puts in the chat. Some of my
lower special education students get quick dots right away,
Jonily : and Nicole, if you want to unmute and expand on that,
I'll expand first, but I'd love to hear your testimony on Nicole
is actually one of our certified coaches who has been heavily
implementing but the one thing I'll Expand on Nicole's comment
is that this changes the outcome of the game, or the question of
who's good at math, because our students with disabilities are
actually better in general than our higher achieving student
With these specific quick dots, it completely changes where
students position themselves mathematically within their
cohort. Nicole, do you want to add on to that, in your
experience with your eighth graders,
Cheri Dotterer: I would say with my experience, it's because it's
a visual. That's why so many of them catch on quicker than some
of the you could say higher students.
Jonily : Absolutely, there is a disadvantage for many of our
high achieving students when we represent math visually, it's
exactly what our students with disabilities need. However, it
becomes a struggle for our high achieving students, because what
are those students good at? Those students are good at
symbols and notations and mimicking and memorizing when we
change it to this visual aspect and make math visual first we
change. Who has the better access to it, and that is our
students with disabilities. Great point. Nicole,
Cheri Dotterer: my daughter is a gifted student with a struggle
in writing. She will tell you, I can do integrals and what are
the what's the other one? Integrals, derivatives,
derivatives. Thank you. In my sleep, but don't ask me to add,
subtract, multiply and divide. What
Jonily : I'm going to ask you to do is and some of you have seen
this before, and this is also purposeful. Some of you have not
seen this before, and this is purposeful. I want to show you
an analogy right now of how our students with disabilities
intake and perceive mathematics and what a challenge it is to
them, because what I'm going to show you next is a visual, but
it's not a connected visual, and I'm going to talk about what
that means, this disconnect with students that struggle with
pattern recognition and making connections, which gifted Kids
can do very naturally and innately and not even be able to
explain how they're doing it. And it's absolutely brilliant.
The way that our students with disabilities see mathematics is
very disjoint, disconnected in our typical traditional
delivery. And I'm going to show you what they feel right now.
Now if you are a mimicker and memorizer, you're going to do
better on this exercise than if you are someone who doesn't
mimic and memorize we're going to show you nine symbols. The
nine symbols are listed vertically and they're in
different orientations. We're going to show you these symbols
for about five seconds. Once we take it away, we're going to ask
you to write down the nine symbols vertically in the same
order, in the same orientation. So don't write until the slide
comes up that says, right, and we take away the images. So in
whatever brain capabilities you have, whether it's seeing
patterns, making connections, or just simply memorizing. I want
you to use the strengths of your abilities to remember as many as
you can. And then, once the slide is taken away, there'll be
a slide go ahead and write down those nine symbols
in the same order, in the same orientation that you saw them. I
have to tell you a story before I have you check your work. I
was doing a professional development a couple of years
ago, and there was a teacher that had been in a professional
development of mine eight years prior. I had done this exercise,
and I was relating it to something a little different,
because the topic of the professional development was a
little different. After I showed this, he got all nine Correct. I
didn't remember exactly who he was, but at the end, when we
were sharing, he reminded me that he was in a professional
development seven or eight years prior I had done this exercise,
he hadn't had any interaction with me since. He hadn't seen me
anytime since, and got all nine correct because of the
connection that I made in the delivery of my instruction when
I did this with his group eight years prior, what I want you to
absorb is that when we can explicitly and directly create
mathematical experiences that are visual and help students
recognize patterns and make connections, because students
with disabilities have a disconnect with recognizing and
using patterns, which is why they sometimes make the same
mistakes or the same core behaviors over and over again.
They're not understanding the connection of whatever
consequence it was. They truly don't remember and relate, and
aren't able to see the own, their own patterns of behavior,
and how that's negatively affecting the interactions with
other students and adults. Pattern Recognition is extremely
important, and it's one of the things that students with
disabilities lack. So not only with soft skills or social
skills. Do we want students to improve their pattern
recognition? We also want them to be able to do that
mathematically. So that carries over to socially and quick dots
again is one of the ways to do that. Let's check our work. I
want you to type in the chat how many you have the correct
orientation and the correct position. I'm going to show you
the alternative in how to deliver and instruct mathematics
and how students can perceive the connections and the
recognizing of patterns. And this is exactly why. I this
person that I told the story about that remembered these
symbols, this teacher had no interaction, had no studying,
had seen this one time and retained it forever. Now I did
ask him, the first time you did it, how many did you get
correct? And he said, three. What I want us to think about
is, how do we deliver instruction mathematically so
that kids don't have to mimic and memorize? They could, if
that's their skill. Like many of our high achieving math kids,
they have a great ability and skill to mimic and memorize, and
I do not want to take that away from them. That's how I got
through math. I could save on a mimic and memorize, and I was
high achieving. Now later on, I found out I knew nothing about
mathematics or numbers. However, I was able to achieve high
because I was able to mimic and memorize. But how do we deliver
instructional experiences mathematically for students so
they don't have to remember, they don't have to mimic, they
don't have to memorize, they'll just know it. It'll be ingrained
and become an innate part of their understanding. And that's
the question that we're going to answer for you tonight. We
Cheri Dotterer: have two comments. They're saying that
they remembered all nine, because they've done this with
you before. I wanted to ask Debbie to unmute and can you
relate to the story that jonily expressed? Is that how you
remembered this? Or was there something else that happened
that helped you recall this task I did? You see this with me. I
want to say three or four. How about you? Nicole?
Jonily : Only can remember one. Even though I have seen this
before, my brain is mush. I love the examples that we have here
with previous interactions and not previous interactions. I'd
like to hear from someone who has not seen this with me
before. I'm going
Cheri Dotterer: to go with Beverly.
Unknown: I have not seen this before. I was in the few seconds
that we had. I was trying to figure out a pattern, but I
really only got to correct there. I'm looking forward to
finding out what the mystery is how to solve this. I was the
same way Beverly. I'd
never seen this before, either, and I was able to do the first
two in the last two, and that new idea how to connect the rest
of them. I could do things full on the pit too.
Jonily : What I love about this is almost all of you have had
interactions with me before and my teaching, but at different
phases. What I mean by that is some of you are recent in the
last year or two. Some of you it's been two to three years.
Some of you, it's been four to five years. Some of you, it's
been seven to eight years since we have had some major
interaction. What I'm delivering to you has been the most
essential and most impactful and most powerful impact for
students with disabilities, but this point, everything that I've
done that has not been impactful has been filtered out, and what
you're seeing tonight is the evolution of what sticks. Just
to make that point, I think if you guys walk away with nothing
else, it is to not start with the most trivial example.
Because when students can't even do the easiest one, and we don't
even have to say it, I can put something up there that that
looks simple, but say, Oh, this is a tricky one, like I'm trying
to insult their intelligence. They know when things are
trivial and when they're complex, because your frequent
flyers in the classroom that are always answering every question
are going to be able to do it. When that happens, that's when
students with disabilities internalize, gosh, if I can't
even do the easy one, so we might as well do the complex one
so that, gosh, I couldn't do that. But she told us that was
really difficult, and I believe her, that it was really
difficult, and I think that is a counterintuitive approach to
delivering mathematics instruction that has been a game
changer. I think it also is counterintuitive for the
research that we have seen in special education. Let me talk
about that for just a moment. All of the facilitation and
instructional guidance that I'm giving you is based on improving
student number sense and conceptual understanding. Number
Sense is defined as the innate intuitive understanding of
number, or the size of number. It's inborn, and it's common
sense. And. I don't want to say common sense in the fact that
everybody has it. It's a common sense meaning if you have it and
if you don't, number sense cannot be explicitly taught, but
it can be learned through experiences. All of the Special
Education Research concludes that students with disabilities
need explicit, direct instruction in mathematics to
close gaps. However, in all of that research, it is based on
the opposite of what I've just described, the opposite of
improving number sense and the opposite of improving conceptual
understanding, the explicit direct instruction for special
ed students using line paper, grid paper to line up numbers,
etc, etc. All of the research has only been done on the
procedural and fact based efforts of mathematics. I
completely agree with that. If we're teaching the long division
algorithm, or we're teaching subtraction with stacking and
regrouping, if we're teaching solving linear equations, if
we're teaching solving proportions, whatever the
content is, whatever the skill is, if it's a procedure that
we're teaching, then students do need direct, explicit
instruction. I don't want them to create that procedure. Here
are the steps. Here's how to do it. Now, try a few that has
typically been 100% of what we teach in mathematics and 100% of
what we put on IEP goals. But if we want to improve the
procedural and the fact based abilities mathematically, we
will gain more leverage in improving the procedures and the
facts if we, at the same time, improve conceptual and number
sense. So I want to state that tonight, I'm not focused on the
procedures. I am going to be focused on the facts later, I am
focused on facilitation strategies to create experiences
in which number sense and conceptual thinking.
Cheri Dotterer: Today's episode of tier one interventions was
brought to you by disability labs. One of the courses that
they have contained in disability Labs is the purple X
mini course. Click on the link in the show notes, and if you
want to know the answer to that symbol. Also click in the show
notes and download the purple X mini course today. I'm Cheri
dotterer, one of your co hosts here at tier one interventions
podcast. You.