A student may be struggling in this area if you observe that s/he:
scores poorly on I-Ready math or other benchmarking measure
has difficulty grasping math concepts
has trouble understanding the “language of math”
has difficulty detecting numerical patterns
has trouble identifying appropriate strategies or processes in word problems
has difficulty recognizing salient details and organizing information needed for problem solving
Math reasoning is complex and at the outset it’s important to make sure the student has the ability to perform the underlying computation (eg. can they multiply successfully if needed for the problem or can they skip count for number patterns?) and can read the problem independently and understand all the vocabulary, not just terms related to math.
