Teacher Tips
Are your students still trying to master their basic facts? Well, you are not alone!! One of the most common complaints from teachers and parents alike is that students do not know their basic operations facts! But there are some things that you can do right now to help your kiddos master them before leaving you this school year! Once your students know the concept of the operations, you are ready to practice automaticity.
1. Find out what facts they know and what facts they don’t know!
Give each student a prepared 10 x 10 operations grid for the operation you are studying (addition and multiplication grids are attached). For 2 minutes everyday for a week, you turn your classroom into a verbal basic skills bank. Students exchange their operation grid with a partner. For one minute, one partner grills the other on the basic fact and allows 3 seconds to answer correctly. If the partner answers correctly, the answer is colored in on the grid; if answered incorrectly, the answer remains uncolored and will be asked again and again until it, too, is colored in. After 1 minute the partners reverse roles. This procedure helps students to see what facts they still do not know. They are the ones that are not colored in by the end of the week! And if they look carefully, they’ll probably see that there are “turn around” facts on the board. (If they learn 8 x 7, they will also know 7 x 8).
2. Help students develop strategies for learning those they are having difficulty with.
For Example, can the student break the fact apart such as in 8 x 7 = (4 x 7) + (4 x 7), or is it a doubles plus 1 (7 + 6 = 6 + 6 + 1.) Do they know the patterns of nines? There are lots of strategies for learning those difficult facts!
3. Make certain that the students know the facts families for each fact.
Go back to the grid, this time having the student give all of the facts in the family of facts.
4. Set up lots of word problems for the students to practice their basic facts.
Let them create problems as well. The more they create on their own, the better they will be at recognizing the problems in other places, and the more visual the problem becomes for them.
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