Practicing Math Facts

October 31, 2009 | Posted in: Class Updates

Leave a Comment

Your child may have told you about our new method for tracking how well he or she is mastering his or her math facts.  As the math material becomes more advanced in fourth grade, it’s important that the students are really comfortable with their math facts.  To help your child to stay motivated, the Everyday Mathematics program provides teachers with a set of timed multiplication fact quizzes.  For each quiz, we calculate two pieces of information: How many consecutive problems your child correctly answers in one minute, and how many total problems your child correctly answers in three minutes.  The first piece of data shows immediate speed and mastery.  (For the one minute score, kids aren’t permitted to jump around to do easy items first, so the data shows your child’s performance when he or she is forced to complete a variety of multiplication problems.)  The second piece of data – the three minute score – reflects your child’s overall level of mastery when he or she is allowed to complete the problems in any order.  (Doing the easy problems first can make kids more efficient, but too much skipping around will slow them down.)

We will be tracking student progress on a line graph so kids can see how much they improve between each fact quiz.  (Each student’s graph is kept private.)  Practicing math facts (particularly multiplication facts) is a DAILY homework assignment – whether it’s written down in their planner or not.  You can help your child to learn his or her math facts by using some of the resources that are available on the internet.  Some of my favorties are:

• Math Magician: Made by the Oswego, NY school district, this fun challenge should be familiar to most students who attended PGS last year.
• Multiplication.com:  Lots of fun interactive games to quiz kids with their multiplication facts.  Enough of a variety to keep kids from getting bored!
• Brainormous: Lots of neat math fact games, especially Multiflier (which is complicated enough to require strategy and planning, along with math fact knowledge).  Beware of (kid-friendly) advertisements.
• Arcademic Skill Builders:  Several arcade-style games for kids to practice all sorts of math facts (and other skills too!)  Parents beware: There is the option for kids to play multiplayer versions of the games, so you may want to supervise.

It’s easy to find other math fact practice games!  (I found most of these just by searching Google for “multiplication practice.”)  If you come across other games that you want to share, drop me a line and I’ll be sure to share them with everyone!