Speakers

Sarah Wedderburn founded Unicornmaths after working as a mainstream teacher and has 25 years of experience as a specialist maths teacher.  She was a lecturer at the Hornsby International Dyslexia Centre, wrote and presented the first British Dyslexia Association’s accredited dyscalculia course, and was a specialist consultant for Dynamo Maths. Sarah runs courses for teachers and TAs in dyscalculia and multi-sensory maths support and lectures on diagnostic maths assessment and remediation.

Sarah’s approach is based on the principle ‘Make numbers real and make them fun’. She believes that effective maths remediation needs to be multi-sensory, encouraging students to touch and move concrete resources so that they develop full understanding and strong visual images before moving on to abstract reasoning. This interaction needs to be enjoyable and include continual overlearning and revisiting to build up a student’s confidence and retention.

Sarah is the author of the Diagnostic Assessment of Numeracy Skills (DANS), a qualitative maths assessment that uses activities and games to discover what a student really knows, as well as what they can present on paper. The DANS Assessment Map enables targeted lesson planning as it shows clearly the numerical concepts that are fully understood and the concepts that need reinforcing in class or individual support lessons. Sarah has also published DANS Solutions One and Solutions Two which provide toolkits of ideas to support students with dyscalculia and maths difficulties.