I’m not a big fan of rote learning, but I realize that kids need to learn to efficiently recall basic math facts. My boy is in 3rd grade and is learning his multiplication facts and is still a bit weak on his addition facts. The strategy they use in my boy’s classroom is repetition. He is given worksheets and asked to work tons and tons of problems. It is not clear to me that they have given him a way to generate answers when he doesn’t remember them. This really frustrates him (and me by the way). I’ve created some flash cards and looked at a number of ways to help him learn these math facts, they include:
- Repetition
- Visualization
- Procedures for generating the answers
- Counting by __ (for multiplication)
- Using reference values
If anyone has other strategies or pointers to online resources that are good examples of these strategies to teach basic math facts, please share.
The most common strategy it seems is recall by drilling and killing like in my boy’s school. One effective way to do this is by using flash cards. The Surfnetkids homework help newsletter lead me to their math facts flashcards page. The problem with most flash cards is that they don’t teach any alternative besides recall. It seems like flash cards could be created that taught alternate strategies.
Posted on September 11th, 2003 by joel
Filed under: instructional design, interactive online math, math education
Leave a Reply