Rate of change (i.e., slope) is a critical mathematics concept for success in everyday life, academics, and professional careers. Students with or at risk of learning disabilities struggle with solving rate-of-change problems, especially word problems. Interventions that incorporate representations and problem-solving strategies are effective for…

The classification of "Specific Learning Disabilities" has experienced revision in the last decade due, in no small part, to the changes provided in IDEIA 2004. The "discrepancy clause" has been replaced with "…response to scientific, research-based intervention," for example. As a result, two new frameworks have been…

Word problems are prevalent on high-stakes assessments, and success on word problems has implications for grade promotion and graduation. Unfortunately, English Language Learners (ELLs) continue to perform significantly below their native English-speaking peers on mathematics assessments featuring word problems. Little is known about the…

The authors' purpose was to determine the effects of computer-based practice and conceptual interventions on computational fluency and word-problem solving of fourth- and fifth-grade students with mathematics difficulties. A randomized pretest-posttest control group design found that students assigned to the computer-based practice intervention…

Research on teaching high school mathematics shows that the topic of percentages often causes learning difficulties. This article describes a method of teaching percentages that the authors used in university bridging courses. In this method, the information from a word problem about percentages is presented in a two-way table. Such a table gives…

The authors completed a narrative review of studies of mathematics interventions from 1996 to 2010 for helping elementary school students with difficulties in mathematics solve word problems. Key instructional components supported by research are teaching cognitive and metacognitive skills; schema-based instruction focusing on semantic analysis,…

This study by Lio Moscardini of the University of Strathclyde shows how a group of 24 children in three Scottish primary schools for pupils with moderate learning difficulties responded to word problems following their teachers' introduction to the principles of Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI). CGI is a professional development programme in…

How do children learn math--and why do some children struggle with it? The answers are in "Number Sense and Number Nonsense," a straightforward, reader-friendly book for education professionals and an invaluable multidisciplinary resource for researchers. More than a first-ever research synthesis, this highly accessible book brings math…

The mathematical performance of 182 third and fourth graders in 8 different areas of mathematics was examined. The children belonged to 4 achievement groups: children with mathematic difficulties (MD only), children with both mathematic and reading difficulties (MD-RD), children with reading difficulties (RD only), and normally achieving children…

Elementary school students often misinterpret the equal sign (=) as an operational rather than a relational symbol. Such misunderstanding is problematic because solving equations with missing numbers may be important for the development of higher order mathematics skills, including solving word problems. Research indicates equal-sign instruction…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of actively categorizing math problems on the math problem solving performance of students with and without attention deficit disorder (ADD). To this purpose, 52 fifth and sixth grade students were involved in actively categorizing or noncategorizing (control) tasks followed by two problem…