Student Intervention
Oh, now I get it!
Karen Tzanetopolis has a gift for breaking down complex ideas into practical strategies that educators, parents, and students can use right away.
Whether it's helping kids feel more confident in math or showing teachers new ways to make math click, Karen loves sharing insights that make learning math simpler and more fun for everyone.
My child just lit up today like a lightbulb went off. Now I am not so afraid."
-Marty M.
Understanding How Children Learn Math
Karen has spent years studying how children learn math — diving deep into the science behind it. As co-author of How Children Learn Math: The Science of Math Learning in Research and Practice, she reviewed thousands of research studies on the cognitive processes involved in math learning. Her work helps teachers and parents understand how the brain learns math and how to make instruction more effective for every child.
Through her research, Karen discovered just how language-heavy and abstract math instruction has become. Many students struggle not because they can’t understand math, but because the language of math is confusing and often creates barriers to learning.
With only 32% of 4th graders and 25% of 12th graders meeting math standards nationwide, it’s clear that many students are being left behind — especially those with learning differences in reading, language, or math. Karen’s work focuses on breaking down those barriers and helping every child access the power of mathematical thinking.
- Mental number line – develop for whole numbers, fractions, and decimals
- Physical number lines – concrete and hands on learning that take the mystery out of numbers, including physical number lines for whole numbers, fractions, decimals, and percentages.
- Math Facts – a systematic, orderly, mathematical approach that relies on reasoning. Flash cards are only used at the end of the learning process, not as a means of learning.
- Logic and mathematical thinking – beyond just performing procedures
- Math language instruction – modifying the abstract English math language for greater understanding and reducing the language load
- Visual-spatial skills – a foundation for math and STEM success, 2D and 3D
- Story problems – research-based strategies for understanding and solving these problems
- Gesture – teacher and student use of gestures improves math learning
- Deep understanding of math – not simply memorization
- Discovering patterns and number relationships
"Oh, NOW I get it!"
Reading, Spelling and Writing
Reading and writing are very complex neurological processes requiring the integration of many parts of the brain. These skills are not inherent to the brain and must be learned. Between 10-20% of children have a specific reading disorder called dyslexia, a language-based learning disability most often deeply rooted in difficulty with phonological processing. It is not correlated with overall cognitive ability, and many children with dyslexia are also very bright, though they often wonder why other children can read so easily when they cannot. When given the appropriate instruction, they can learn to read!
Karen uses structured literacy to teach reading, spelling, and writing, specifically a speech-to-print approach. Many schools use a leveled literacy approach, which is insufficient for children with most reading disorders, thus leaving many students to struggle unnecessarily.
Karen’s individualized approach to reading includes:
- Phonological Awareness – building blocks of speech, reading, writing
- Phonics – 26 letters represent 42 sounds of speech
- Spelling – using sounds and allowable letter patterns, not memorization
- Developing mental orthographic images of words – automatic recognition and visual recall of words which is difficult for children with reading difficulty
- Morphology – understanding the parts of words that create meaning
- Vocabulary – understanding and using words meaningfully
- Visual processing – strategies to reduce skipping words and lines, seeing part of a word and guessing the rest, and adding words not in the text
- Background knowledge – necessary for comprehension
- Abstract language - inference, metaphors, sarcasm, idioms, multiple meanings, getting the joke
- Reading comprehension – what does it mean, what is the point, main ideas and details
- Story retelling – read it, write about it, tell about it