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Getting children with learning disabilities involved in their own learning is perhaps the single most important strategy for making them successful learners. When helping children develop basic math skills, first obtain a statement of commitment from the children. They need to decide to learn the skill before they can begin to learn it. Next, have a goal-setting conference with each child. This should be done after assessing the child's individual skills and the skills on which he or she needs to work. Setting goals with the child helps make the him or her become proactive about learning. When the child owns the learning, he or she will inevitably be much more successful learners.

A program called MATHFACT, which was developed in Queensland, Australia, and has since been used all over the world with great success, presents ten guidelines for teaching math to students with disabilities. First, always refer to previous learning before introducing new tasks. Mathematical concepts are hierarchical. For example, in order to perform division, children need to know multiplication, subtraction, and addition. Children with learning disabilities often have more difficulty remembering previous lessons than children without learning disabilities, so it is even more important to go over previous lessons.

The second guideline is to keep assessing the children as the instruction continues. Pay attention to the children's rate of progress, types of errors, and best learning styles in order to more effectively teach.

The third guideline is to modify the order in which facts are taught. Traditional instruction for additional facts are taught by the size of the sum. Children with learning disabilities learn better using the 72 easiest addition facts: count-ons (+1, +2, +3; Ex: 4+1=5; 4+2=6; 4+3=7) (45 facts), zeroes (Ex: 1+0=1) (19 facts), doubles (4+4=8; 7+7=14) (6 new facts that are not part of previous facts), and 10 sums, or numbers that add up to 10 (Ex: 6 + 4) (2 new facts).

The fourth guideline is to teach specific strategies for finding answers to unknown facts. Children with learning disabilities often need to be taught specific strategies to help them learn, and they need to be reminded and retaught often. (For example, the strategy of starting with the biggest number and adding the smaller.)

The fifth guideline is the present activities to fit different learning styles for different students. For auditory learners, provide oral instruction. For visual learners, use pictures,

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