Jan's story

Facilitating understanding and success in Numeracy for a student with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

This story tracks the explorations of a teacher into how she might enable her Grade 5 student with ASD to question and really think about numbers. We hope her work will provide ideas and illumination for other teachers with students similar to Michael.

Background
Assessment for learning
Gathering ideas
What was learnt
What this has meant to Michael
Resources


Background

Jan, an experienced teacher with a particular interest in numeracy, reflected on the numeracy understandings of Michael, a student with ASD in her grade 4/5 class.

She noted that he had a fantastic memory and was able to easily recall simple number facts, tables etc. He knew odd and even numbers and was fascinated by bus stop numbers. Indeed, he had the fascination with numbers that can be found in people with autism spectrum disorder, but Jan wondered what this meant for his functional numeracy and his capacity to think, act and communicate mathematically. She sensed that Michael had difficulty seeing numbers as meaningful and, from early in the year, she had noted that he was reluctant to participate in numeracy tasks. She also observed that there were many things in the classroom numeracy program that he found difficult, frustrating and didn’t seem to understand. Jan also noticed that the general language of mathematics that she used with the other students did not seem to be ‘clicking’ with Michael.

Jan saw the Inclusive Curriculum Project as an opportunity to explore her questions about Michael’s numeracy understanding. She evolved three questions for her action research:

• Does Michael understand the steps that build towards functional numeracy?
• How much of his learning is based upon a conceptual understanding and how much has been rote learning?
• What are the questions and strategies that the teacher will use to reveal those understandings?