Teaching Students with Learning Problems in Math to Acquire, Understand, and Apply Basic Math Facts

Students with learning problems (i.e., students with learning disabilities or emotional disabilities and those considered at-risk for school failure) are not making acceptable math progress in the nation's schools. Fortunately, instructional practices exist that help these students achieve in math. Ten instructional components that have research support for promoting math achievement are presented. A math curriculum, the Strategic Math Series, which incorporates the research-based teaching practices, is described. Next, the results from field-testing the Strategic Math Series with 22 teachers are presented. The field-test results indicate that 109 students with learning problems were able to (a) acquire computational skills across facts, (b) solve word problems with and without extraneous information, (c) create word problems involving facts, (d) apply a mnemonic strategy to difficult problems, (e) increase their rate of computation, and (f) generalize math skills across examiners, settings, and tasks. Finally, issues in math instruction are discussed, and the need to include best practices within instructional materials is highlighted.