DON'T WAIT FOR THE FACTS!

Do you have students who aren’t progressing in math because they don’t know their addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division facts? For some students—including students who are gifted in math—math fact memorization is very difficult. Math instruction can be very tedious for them as they practice their facts day after day, waiting to go on to other things until they learn those facts.

My solution? Don’t wait! While math facts fluency definitely helps students complete math tasks more quickly and easily, stalling math learning until computation facts are learned well can keep students from achieving all that is possible for them. So until the students know their facts, scaffold instruction to support them in continuing problem-solving, even without knowing their facts. Then supplement math lessons with some daily time to practice math facts, but use activities that help students in ways other than simple facts drills. 

Following are some tips for teaching students who struggle to learn their math facts.

Scaffolding when math facts are not mastered:

• Allow students to use addition and multiplication charts or calculators This will not help much with learning the facts, but will enable the students to continue learning other math concepts and problem-solving skills even though they have not memorized their math facts.
• Teach the students the tapping system used in the TouchMath® curriculum. With this system, the students learn touch points on each numeral from 1 to 9. They then learn how to tap on numerals while counting up to add and counting down to subtract. They also learn skip counting and then tap on numerals while skip-counting in order to multiply. Often students who tap with this system begin to remember the facts better without tapping, as the hands-on learning aids memorization.
• Allow students to use an abacus or rekenrek to add and subtract, or to skip count while multiplying. As with TouchMath®, this hands-on approach has the additional benefit of helping the students memorize their math facts.

Supplemental activities for learning the facts:

• Teach skip-counting songs to help children memorize their multiplication facts.
• Teach addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division memorization tricks such as those in three books by Susan R. Greenwald: Two Plus Two Is Not Five; Five Times Five Is Not Ten and Ten Divided by Five Is Not Five.
• Use stories to teach multiplication facts. Two great sources for such stories are the book, Times Tables the Fun Way, and the video series called Times Tales.
• Play games that practice math facts. Games make learning the facts more fun and can help discouraged students. A wide variety of math facts games can be found online and in classroom supply stores. If purchasing games is not possible, a simple way to play a math facts game is to play “Math Facts War” with a set of flashcards. Simply divide the stack of flashcards evenly among 2-3 players, and have the students simultaneously turn over the top flashcards on their piles; whoever has the flashcard with the highest answer adds all the cards turned over onto their pile, and whoever has the most cards in the end wins!

Some students with learning disabilities, such as dyscalculia, may never become truly fluent with their math facts. But this doesn’t mean that they cannot learn to do math! Math is so much more than facts—enjoy seeing your students grow in the many other areas of math learning available to them! And while you do, you may just see the math facts become memorized along the way!