Since 1993, the math activities and games in this book were researched, designed, and implemented for learners ages 8 to adult thru the perspective of a vision therapist and teacher. Lessons help stimulate student visual attention, streamline concept review, enhance recall, and empower student independent learning. All 52 math oral drills are NCTM correlated lessons in numbers & operations, problem solving, measurement, data analysis & probability, algebra, and geometry. Lessons apply learning principles in psychology (mnemonics), education (multiple intelligences), linguistics (Rassias Method), and visual skills training (metronome). Activities for lessons include dice games, mnemonics, hand-eye coordination exercises, oral drills, flashcards, and a metronome memory game. For cumulative review, a team building game covers all lessons.
About the Author: Raul Javier Aldape currently serves as a GED Teacher at an Adult Education Center with the U.S. Department of Justice in Fort Worth, Texas since 2001. He has dedicated his efforts at improving math instruction for struggling adult learners by researching, designing and implementing activities and lessons from his experiences while working as a vision therapist, public school teacher, and Spanish Immersion Instructor since 1993. While working as a vision therapist from 1993 to 1996, he was able to gain a firm understanding of the visual system and how it affects learning. Thus, vision training principles were implemented in the intricate designing of the math lessons. Visual tracking, auditory memory, saccades, and visualization abilities were skills that he helped provide remediation thru a behavioral optometrist's direction while working with children that had strabismus, lazy eye, nearsightedness, and farsightedness. By using the auditory memory skill, he has developed a groundbreaking auditory memory exercise using a metronome and math processes to facilitate recall. From 1994 to 2001 while working as a public school teacher for 3 different school districts, he accumulated various 1st, 5th, and 4th grade math trainings which influenced his design of math games and activities. In 1999, he was chosen for the Eisenhower Teacher Program. While participating in this program, he attended cross-curricular trainings in math, art, science, and writing at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. For his accomplishments while teaching 4th grade bilingual children at Richey Elementary in Pasadena ISD, he was nominated for the prestigious Pasadena Chamber of Commerce Teacher of the Year Award. Art and writing exercises were integrated to all math lessons presented in this book. Currently, he serves as a Spanish Immersion Instructor for Law Enforcement Officers in the Bureau of Prisons. Thru this program, he was exposed to the Rassias Method of second language acquisition. In an immersion setting, all target vocabulary and phrases are rehearsed repeatedly in an effort to help students develop a schema for contextual vocabulary in the Spanish language pertinent to both social and work related situations. Thru the Rassias Method, he treats math as a language with steps that can be learned thru repeated exposure. Raul holds a Life Certified Bilingual Early Childhood thru 6th Grade Teacher Certification thru the Texas Education Agency since 1996.