The experiences of Primary 6 students with dyslexia using the metacognitive-based approach of problem solving for algebraic word problems

Research has shown that students with dyslexia internationally can struggle with aspects of Mathematics.Moreover, they specifically struggle with word problems, because of the mathematical language and multi-steps involved, and the demands on working memory.At the Dyslexia Association of Singapore (DAS), the Problem Sums for Upper Primary (PSUP) curriculum was developed in 2016 to meet the needs of our primary school students who were firm in their understanding of basic mathematical concepts but lacked the appropriate strategies to solve higherorder word problems.The PSUP curriculum utilizes a combination of Polya's 4-step processes, the Concrete-Representational-Abstract approach (C-R-A) and the Try-Share-Learn-Apply approach as its primary teaching methodology.As the programme has yet to explore students' meta-cognitive abilities in planning, monitoring, solving and checking word problems, this study aims to understand the thought processes of eight Primary six students in solving word problems involving Algebra concepts through interviews and a series of tests.To evaluate the effectiveness of the PSUP curriculum teaching approaches, the students' pre-test, review test and post-test scores were compared.The results showed that 75% of the students improved from Pre-test to Review test and from Pre-test to Post test for all the algebraic concepts taught.Students were given a questionnaire at the beginning and end of the intervention period to assess their confidence level in solving Mathematics problem sums.Responses from the questionnaires also showed that the students were more confident in solving word problems as compared to at the start of intervention.Limitations and instructional implications will also be discussed.Further research into the students' metacognition before and after solving word problems would give a deeper insight to how their thought processes may have evolved, and how the use of our structured metacognitive-based approach has an impact on them.