21/03/2026
So much maths teaching stops just before it clicks!
If you know me off the internet, you’ll probably already know that spring is my very favourite time of year. I love the anticipation, that moment just before everything bursts to life.
It’s exactly the same feeling I get when I’m teaching, right at that moment when I can tell the pieces of the puzzle are about to come together for a student so that they can truly understand a concept. It’s why I do what I do.
It’s also one of the things I found most frustrating about classroom teaching. So often, I had to push children to move on before they had reached that point. To employ the cheesy metaphor, they never really got the chance to blossom because we couldn’t quite afford the time to move from picture 1 to picture 2.
This is a particular problem for many neurodivergent learners. If processing speed is often slow for them, they can take longer to fully understand concepts. And if teaching is always delivered at the ‘average’ speed, that will never meet their learning needs.
Imagine the frustration of the spring flowers staying forever in bud, and never quite breaking free. Now imagine that feeling in a maths lesson - just when you’re about to grasp it, the learning moves on.
If I could tell people one thing about teaching learners with dyslexia and dyscalculia it would be this:
✨ Keep going! ✨
Taking a long time to understand a concept doesn’t mean it’s impossible. The adult teaching them will probably get bored and give up long before the learner will. Sometimes a break is needed, sometimes it can take months, but it is possible.
The usual solution to this problem in maths is to give up on chasing conceptual understanding and to just teach a method.
Don’t understand equivalent fractions?
Just multiply the top and the bottom.
Don’t understand multiplication?
Memorise your times tables learning a song instead.
Of course these ‘solutions’ cause far more problems in the longer term. I am yet to meet a child who can’t understand maths with the right support - and I’ve met many who truly believe that they can’t.
So what does that support actually look like in practice?
🧱 Go back to the concrete. If a concept isn’t landing, the answer is almost never more of the same explanation. Go back to physical objects, real contexts, something tangible. Abstract methods come after understanding, not before.
🔙 Don’t be put off by going back to basics. If your child has moved on to something new at school but the foundations aren’t secure, it’s worth spending time at home on the earlier concept. It isn’t going backwards - it’s building the foundations that make everything else possible.
🔄 Repetition is part of the process, not a sign of failure. For many dyslexic and dyscalculic learners, a concept needs to be revisited many more times than you’d expect before it fully sticks. That’s overlearning, and it’s how long-term memory works for lots of people. It doesn’t mean they haven’t understood - it means the understanding needs more time to become automatic.
🌱 Celebrate the almost. If your child is nearly there, name it. “You nearly had that - I could see it.” The moment just before it clicks is worth acknowledging, not rushing past.
⏳ Trust the process even when it’s slow. Understanding that takes a long time is still understanding. A child who truly grasps why equivalent fractions work will always be in a stronger position than one who can multiply the top and bottom without knowing why.
The lightbulb moments will come. Sometimes they just need more time, a different angle, and someone who hasn’t given up on them yet.
