Notes

James is a learning disabled young man who is in a small group 6th grade math class
Although James has been diagnosed with dyslexia, he seems to have many of the characteristics
of a dyslexic student. As far as his compensating strengths go, he is pretty coordinated for a boy
ofhis size. (He is overweight.) He is one ofthe first ones chosen when sides are picked for
basketball and I'm told by others that he is a talented football player.
In addition to his athletic skills, I believe he is a popular teammate because he does not try to do
things all by himself and when someone on his team makes a mistake, he's there for support and
encouragement. At the moment, he is helping us with a new 6th grade student who is having
trouble adjusting to the middle school life. James knows the 6th grader from their elementary
school and the younger boy looks up to James. James also brings these empathy skills to our
small group discussions about literature. He's got a strong ability to put himself into the shoes of
the characters we are discussing and coming up with possible motivations for their actions and
predicting future behavior.

Difficulties of dyslexia
As I mentioned above, James is in a small group class for math. Last year, as a sixth grader,
James had very little of the multiplication table memorized. This slowed him down in everything
from division to working with fractions. Already this year, I can see some improvement. He told
me his mother worked with him over the summer. He still is lacking in this area, but I'm
encouraging the mom - who works as a school aide in another building - to keep up the good
work.

One of James's main obstacles when it comes to grade-level math work, is his difficulties
completing multiple-step computations and word problems. For example, when dividing
fractions, he will often forget to invert the second fraction. He sometimes inverts the second
fraction needlessly while performing a multiplication of fractions problem. I have noticed a bit of
an improvement when it comes to changing mixed numbers into improper fractions, and back
again. I think this is a result of his working more on the times tables.

As far as word problems go, I have to frequently ask him to figure out what the question is
asking and what a reasonable answer might be. Then we can work out a plan to solve the
problem. 1 want him to decide whether we have to we multiply or divide, add or subtract, what
step comes first and an effective "check" for our answer. Getting him to think about the problem
before putting pencil to paper is helping him organize the skills needed to successfully complete
the work.