This document introduces the Carroll Math Summer Seminar 2009. [1] It provides a brief history of Carroll school, which opened in 1967 to teach dyslexic children and moved to its current campus in 1972. [2] It explains that Carroll struggled to find an effective math curriculum for its students and developed its own called Carroll Math, which combines various commercially available math programs and copyrighted materials. [3] The theme of the week-long seminar is to show how Carroll students with language difficulties can solve math problems conceptually through thinking rather than relying on traditional skills.

1. CARROLL MATH SUMMER SEMINAR 2009
“Teaching Math is Teaching Thinking”

2. A Little History
1967- Carroll opened as a school for dyslexic children
1972- Carroll moved to current campus in Lincoln MA
Four Truths:
1. Carroll has taught children to read using the
Orton Gillingham Approach for forty two years.
2. No commercially available curriculum could do the
job properly.
3. Carroll has struggled to find an effective way to teach
math to our type of learners.
4. No commercially available curriculum in
math could do the job properly.

3. Therefore, many of us have collected the best available
materials, texts, and activities to create Carroll Math,
which is a collection of commercially available products
and some copyrighted material which will be used
specifically in the Carroll Math approach.
1. Symphony Math
2. Cognitive Activities
3. Number Worlds
4. Singapore Math
5. Stern Materials
6. Tom Harding Curriculum
7. Carroll Teacher Constructed Lessons

4. The best way to describe the difference
between Carroll Math and traditional
approaches is to give you an example.

5. WORD PROBLEM
Bob’s Landscaping Company took on a lawn care
job. Bobb mowed a fourth of the lawn, Bobbi mowed
a third of the lawn, and Bob mowed the rest of
the lawn which was 600 square ft.
How large is the lawn?
All I want you to do is to consider your first move.
How would you begin to solve this problem?

8. What did you notice about
Kaylee’s presentation?
• Real reading difficulties
• Bright and articulate
• Some real “encoding” problems in math
• Confidence and pride
• Really good thinking
• Logical order to her solution
• Evidence of preparation

11. THEME FOR THE WEEK
This week, you will see examples of children
with quite significant language-learning difficulties,
throughout elementary and middle school,
take on challenges, solve problems, and
do math that (technically) they don’t have the
(traditional) math skills to solve.

12. How is this possible?
Carroll Math places thinking above all else.
Number sense emerges from thinking.
Computational accuracy develops through number sense.
Conceptual understanding arises from students’ questions.

13. Traditional American math students tend to look
at problems they haven’t seen before and say,
“I don’t know. I haven’t been taught that yet.”
Students who are taught that math is a thinking
activity then to say, “I haven’t seen this problem
before, but I think I know how to start….
Oh, wait a minute, If I can do this,
then I can keep going this way.”