Math made fun: How Madras Dyslexia Association’s toolkit helps children with dyscalculia

Imagine learning mathematics without the anxiety and fear traditionally associated with the subject, surrounded instead by colourful tiles of mathematical operations, small arithmetic pies, and numbered soft balls. This is exactly the experience that the Madras Dyslexia Association (MDA) has set out to offer children.

Launched in July, the MDA has introduced a toolkit titled ‘Count on Me’, designed primarily to support children with dyscalculia, a learning disability that affects the ability to understand numbers, arithmetic, and mathematical concepts.

“It is not just for children with dyscalculia; math can be scary for a lot of people. The aim is to make learning math fun and friendly,” said Swetha Krishna, special educator, MDA. She, along with two others of the association, worked with mathematics experts to bring out the toolkit, which consists of 18 activity-based learning material, 64 worksheets, evaluation checklist, and teachers’ manual, besides videos for the activities.

“Children with dyscalculia may find it hard to quantify numbers and often struggle with spatial awareness and visuals, so we decided to start from scratch when designing the toolkit,” Ms. Swetha said.

What does the toolkit contain?

The toolkit has cards with numbered dots to help children first identify numbers, gradually understand ascending order, and eventually progress to fractions as they grow older.

“The children are not limited to activity-based learning, as they ultimately have to write an exam. They apply this knowledge through worksheets, where the problems are modeled on the activities they complete using the kit. This way, they can revisit the concepts and relate to them more effectively,” said Yasodhara Narayanan, head of new initiatives at MDA.

The result of three years of work, the kit includes materials designed to support children from kindergarten through Class V in learning mathematics. It contains 64 colour-coded booklets structured progressively, covering addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, decimals, and other mathematical concepts. Each operation is broken down by digit complexity (from one-digit to four-digit) and colour-coded into red, yellow, green, and blue, based on the level of guidance students require. The kit is currently being used by teachers in 50 schools across the city.

The team wanted to ensure that each child could relate to what they wrote and saw on paper. From tracing numbers using sandpaper to identifying them in real-life contexts, every detail was carefully considered.

As part of this process, the team felt it was important to represent the number nine as it is commonly written by people. “Nobody writes nine like an inverted six. When we write it by hand, it looks nothing like the printed version. Children should be able to see and use the forms they are familiar with. So, we went on a hunt to find a way to print the number nine the way we actually write it,” she added.

With positive reception from teachers, the team is not stopping with just the toolkit. “We are constantly evolving and hoping to expand the kit to cover more aspects of mathematics,” said Ms. Swetha.