Math Facts

Hi Paul,

Music may be a path your school might try. Also the blog Building Math Positivity has some resources also.

I use the website www.IXL.com to assess students ability for all areas of math. A great part of the website is you can adjust it to grade level and state standards. Some good practice websites are www.academicskillbuilder.com, www.coolmath.com, www.easycbm.com, and www.multiplication.com.

Have you checked out the Khan Academy website? Salman Khan has a number of easy to watch videos for young and older students. He also has a knowledge tree that leads from one skill to the next. www.khanacademy.org

If you need more tools or ideas check out tech4teacher.wordpress.com

I tell my students at the beginning of the year that I will test them weekly on their addition facts. They go at their own pace. I provide flash cards for the 2's first. Every Friday, I test them. When they pass, they move on to the 3's and so on. I post what facts students are on on the board. They are in competition with each other as well as providing each other with support. When students pass, they clap for each other. One student was finished prior to the winter break. I also give them a certificate when they finish.

Throughout the week, they also have time to complete an addition fact sheet with the facts they are working on and another sheet that they write the addition facts on. The second sheet is set up like a table with 4 columns and 20 rows so that they can write the facts...
2+1 = 3
2+2 = 4 etc. It really works!

I hope this helps!

Sorry if this is an ignorant question, but what exactly are the "math facts"?

Memorization has always been a program for students to learn their basic math facts - if you go to www.123math.ca and download the Addition program for free, it could help you with your concerns which are very typical. This program has 10 songs which I have used from Kindergarten to Grade 4. I went into a K class, the principal said good luck, because these kids are antsie, I figured I might last 15 minutes, well an hour later the kids were singing, moving about and really enjoying the songs. Each of these songs are different and are a lot of fun - this is part of the success because they have catchie tunes to learn the basic addition facts - yet the kids don't know they are learning but just having fun. The program also has over 270 instructional pages for the teacher and the parents to follow their progress, and they learn step by step, they can't progress to the next step before they have successfully completed the previous step. There are 28 audio files, so the program progresses from the pen and paper stage to the mental stage with the audio files - There are also Flash Card designs that students can make to help them learn their basic facts. A mother of a Grade 3 girl, talk to me and said that her daughter was math challenged and expected her to have math problems during her school days. The Grade 3 girl was always the last 2 or 3 in her class. In March she started the math program with addition and in August she completed the program (all 4 operations), In Grade 4, in September she was in the top 3 of her class. She has since graduated from high school and almost completed her University, Her mother said that she always did well after learning the basic facts, if she had a problem it was understanding the concept, not making errors with computation. Most students in the Upper and in High School make computational errors because they do not know their basic facts. If you do download the program, you can get email support with questions about the program, by writing to ask@photographybyken.ca. Good Luck

I use a math challenge called 'multiplying for ice cream' where I give weekly fact tests. Students begin at 2X and after passing it, go on to 3X... Students who pass up to 9X and a multifact test recieve an ice cream party. They love it. We have a visual ice cream sunday I got from a friend with the Dish is their name; banana=2X; 3X,4X,5X are ice cream scoops; 6X,7X,8X are toppings; and 9X is a cherry. They colr the paper in when we begin and cut out and put on paper as they pass each test.

My school uses the fact of the week (we tried fact of the day-too much change). Every week, our school has one of the fab 15 (most common, troublsome facts), as fact of the week. Students write the fact on all papers as part of their heading. It is on boards, in the hallways, and various other areas in the school. This has worked well.

We also have 3 words of the week in math. I use a vocab organizer and have students write definitions, and other activities with each word such as draw a picture of it if appropriate.

Hi Judi! Great lesson examples! Do you have any resources you can recommend for other teachers to refer to? These are such useful lessons and techniques.

Hubert

I use math facts cafe to print worksheets for some of the timed tests. I think the http://www.mathfactcafe.com/
I also use aplusmath.com games for practice.
I will try to remember to bring home the fab 15 math facts we use.
Math vocab is chosen by our math coach.