The Dyscalculia Assessment

Featured in 'Read These' section in Times Education Supplement, TES Wales and TES Scottland, 18th June 2010
‘This book is essential to anyone working with children with dyscalculia, providing a comprehensive guide to individual assessment. It helps special educators to profile areas of strength and weakness in the different components of mathematics, connecting assessment directly to remedial instruction. The text is easy to read, and takes the teacher through the nuts and bolts of the assessment process from start to finish.' Anna J. Wilson, Lecturer in Learning , University of Canterbury and Honorary Research Associate, University of Auckland, New Zealand
'A comprehensive support for anyone teaching children with significant mathematics difficulties of any kind. It provides an accessible assessment tool with a detailed guide to children's possible responses, based on current research about significant aspects of knowledge and understanding. There is guidance on what to do about the difficulties identified, using a structured approach to learning mathematics which emphasises understanding and reasoning, practical models and talk...This is an extremely useful resource for those working with underachieving children.  It combines a direct way of identifying key difficulties with a tried-and-tested teaching approach.' Sue Gifford, PGCE Programme Convenor (Primary), Roehampton University, London, UK
‘A wonderfully comprehensive and clear guide to assessing and then remediating dyscalculic difficulties... I am confident that it will prove invaluable to me in my work.' -- Dyslexia Contact
"This book is a wonderfully comprehensive and clear guide to assessing and then remediating dyscalculic difficulties." Sue Lilley, Specialist Teacher
Both authors draw on their extensive knowledge as teachers of special needs and have compiled a very worthwhile resource designed to identify in detail the strengths and weaknesses of an individual who may be struggling to learn mathematics... -- Nasen Special
This is an excellent resource, and I would recommend it for purchase to place in a school's special education library, where many teachers can reference the book to deal with students with intractable problems. Or, a school might decide that one special education teacher would be the "math specialist", who would assess students with serious math disabilities using the assessments, and providing remediation ideas for the child's special educator. -- www.about.com
Really this should be titled 'what you always wanted to know about dyscalculia but didn't know what or how to ask...' - At last a book that not only tells you about the problem - but also what to do about it and gives you the tools to do something about it! Has invaluable resources and appendices - simply miles ahead of what I was using up to now. If like me you think that dyscalculia is 20-30 years behind dyslexia - this assessment book and accompanying brings it bang up to date. You need to spend some time reading through the guide part it particularly if you are new to the problem or SEN children - but guess what - this is a complex matter that deserves some time spent on it and time spent with this book will pay big dividends. It is simply packed with both academic rigor and common sense- a rare thing in education. A. Coomes * Amazon.Com Books *