The Program Overview
Dynamo Math aims to support pupils at risk of developmental dyscalculia and pupils performing significantly below their peers in math.
The program supports the Special Ed, SEN and RTI2 approaches and follows four important stages:
- Assess
- Plan
- Intervene
- Review
The assessment drives the intervention and delivers:
- an individualized Number Sense Developmental Profile
- an Individualized Support Plan
- Scheme of Work signposted to a purposeful intervention
- standardized score and percentile rank
The easy-to-use process and layout mean that teachers, parents and specialists can follow the seamless approach from assessment to intervention. The personalization feature offers a Global Intervention Pathway based on the assessment recommendations and this pathway can then be auto-customized.
Irrespective of the pupil’s diagnosis and prognosis, the assessment unfolds the pupil’s individual Number Sense Developmental Profile based on their unique neuro-diverse profile.
The Program uses the researched and validated NumberSenseMMR® framework to identify:
- symptoms of dyscalculia and/or
- maths developmental delays.
The profile shows the pupil’s strengths and areas of challenges so that a bespoke approach to re-positioning the development of the pupil’s number sense can begin.
The assessment provides a Number Sense Developmental Profile that identifies if the pupil is at risk of developmental dyscalculia or math developmental delays and informs of the specific areas of strengths and needs.
This profile is supported by an Individual Support Plan that pinpoints the small-step areas of development. These areas of development are signposted to Dynamo Intervention.
The Class Report provides a quick glance at the entire class or group and gives the teacher a snapshot of the pupils’ assessment status and progress over time.
Standardized score and percentile rank are also included. The percentile rank describes the pupil’s rank or position when compared to other pupils who are of the same age.
1. Standardised Scores with Percentile Rank and Number Sense Developmental Profile
2. Individual Support Plan with a Scheme of Work and Signposts to Dynamo Intervention
3. Assessment Class Summary Report
Dynamo Intervention takes a developmental approach, where the learning of specific skills takes an integrated approach using three pathways (Triple Pathway): Lesson Plans, Online Activities and Worksheets. Each pathway is structured in small, cumulative steps of number development ensuring consolidation and confidence building before higher numbers are introduced.
Its strength lies in the way it offers multiple engagement routes so that the same skill is learned and consolidated in different ways whilst harnessing the pupil’s senses, emotions, verbal, visual, auditory and kinaesthetic skills. It provides the interventionist multiple opportunities to see where the barriers lie so that the teaching approach can be precise and continuously shaped by the pupil’s responses.
The multiple pedagogies and the dynamic interaction between the pupil and the interventionist will promote a warm, engaging and cordial flow of communication. This lays the building blocks of developing the necessary inquiry, language, reflection, investigative, thinking and reasoning skills to secure number sense development.
The use of the Support Tools within this integrated approach of observing the pupil’s engagement within the Triple Pathway ensures that the goal towards mastery is never lost.
Dynamo Intervention is a positive program aimed at shaping and re-positioning areas of uneven number sense development and keeping the pupil on track because any weakness at this level will hold them back.
4. Visual Report
5. Pupil’s View of Progress and Performance
Why Do Some Pupils Have Significant Difficulties with Early Math?
Maths is made up of a number of developmental components that link together. For some pupils, the developmental components of acquiring the simple, foundational number skills is immature and their progress may be hindered due to one or more of the following factors:
- co-occurring difficulties such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, working memory impairments, auditory processing difficulties, sensory motor challenges, visual challenges, losing focus, inattention, impulsivity, etc. These co-occurring difficulties also vary in their levels of complexity.
- biological conditions determined by the pupil’s genes.
Dyscalculia – a formal diagnosis by an educational psychologist using a variety of psychometric tests. - sensory conditions where the sensory integrative capacity of the brain is insufficient to meet the demands of foundational maths. Educational Psychologists use Dynamo Assessment in addition to other tests to support their understanding of the pupil’s Number Sense Developmental Profile.
- environmental deprivation – access to schooling or relevant number developmental activities.
- poor teaching – mediation of how numbers have been introduced to the pupil.
- curriculum that is moving too rapidly – conceptual number sense development is not consolidated.
- the pupil’s early warning signs were not identified and addressed using a systematic approach – preventative approach of identifying early signs to close the gaps in learning during the pupil’s formative years.
