Addition Strategies for Fact Fluency

At the beginning of each school year in math, one of the first skills I focus on is teaching my students a variety of strategies to teach fact fluency for recalling basic facts up to 20 with automaticity.  I try to put as many tools in their toolbox as I can to help them feel more confident and to differentiate instruction.  We focus on Touch Math, making 10, doubles, doubles +1, counting on, and related facts.

Research shows that long-term success in math is closely tied to having strong number sense.  This includes having fluency with basic facts.  Math only gets more complicated the further along the children go, and expending mental energy counting to solve addition and subtraction facts is a waste of their time.

Automaticity does not happen overnight, and it shouldn't simply be a memorization of facts. It is usually acquired in a certain order.

• First, children begin by understanding that numbers represent quantities.  They typically learn about this in pre-k and kinder.  

• Second, they can begin using procedures to figure out facts.  They develop ways to remember facts through strategies. (This is where we began this week). 

• Third, children can achieve recalling facts with automaticity.

One strategy we focused on this week was doubles facts.  We watched a Doubles Rap you can see by clicking below: 

I love this video, but I wish the quality were better and that it had the lyrics and facts captioned on-screen.  It would be more effective that way, but, beggars can't be choosers, right?! 

However, Flocabulary has an AWESOME video about doubles!  Do you guys know about Flocabulary?  Think Ron Clark meets YouTube.  All the awesome songs about every content area, but in an animated form with subtitles.  My kids LOVE it!  (And I do, too!) . My district pays for our subscription, but they have a free trial if you want to check it out!

We used a couple of things from Amy Lemons' packet called Learning Our Addition Strategies. 

This has a copy of the lyrics to the Doubles Baby rap.  I made a copy of for each student to glue into his or her math journal.  Then, we made the Double's Dude craftivity to reinforce that strategy.  They are super cute AND give the kids a visual reminder of the doubles strategy.  

We also focused on counting on.  We glued in the little poster from Amy Lemons' product, and then played several games to practice this strategy.  (See games pictured below).

The counting on strategy teaches the children to begin by counting with the largest number and then add the smaller number on to it.  This seems obvious, but children often add numbers in the order in which they appear instead of determining the fastest way to get to the sum.  (This strategy will also come in handy when we start adding more than 2 numbers at once).  

To practice counting on, we played a fun partner game called "Walk the Plank."  The kids love this game.  I play it every year. 

The students have a "plank," playing pieces, and dice.  I use 10-sided dice so they can add numbers all the way through 20.   They roll the dice, add the two numbers together, and then remove their opponents playing piece that is next to that number.  

You can click here to see how to play the game.  Click here to get Walk the Plank for YOUR classroom.  

We also played a game of Fast Fact Scoot! created by Schroeder Shenanigans in 2nd.

 

Automaticity is usually achieved in small increments.  We focus on one or two sets of facts, and then we build upon those.  Then, once those are maintained, we build with another set of facts. 

I hope your school year is off to a great start and that you can incorporate some of these activities and strategies into your math instruction!

Make each moment a teachable one!

Five For Friday!

Wow, friends!  One more week is behind us!  One more week closer to summer!  One more week that we spent time learning some amazing things in 2nd grade!  My kids are one week smarter and getting dangerously close to becoming 3rd graders!

One quick note - my WHOLE store is on SALE today and tomorrow! Click the picture below to head to my store!

I have had such a good time linking up each week with Kacey over at Doodle Bugs that I'm going to do it again!  I had a lot going on this week, so I'm going to narrow it down to my Top 5 in no particular order.

We spent our week in Math learning all about graphs.  In 2nd grade we collect data, organize the data into tally charts, bar graphs and pictographs, explain the length of bars in bar graphs and number of pictures in pictographs, answer one step questions about our graphs and make predictions about graphs.  We used several actives from my new NO PREP Graphs! Click the picture below to see this in my TPT store.

We began the week by creating an anchor chart.  Each student voted for their favorite type of pizza out of four choices and wrote it on a sticky note.  Then, each student put a tally on our chart for their vote.  We organized the tallies and created our bar graph.  We answered questions about our graph and then the students worked in groups to create their own questions about our pizza graph. 

Here are their sticky notes:

(I just compiled them to hang it in the hall so others can see how we got our data).

Here is what our completed bar graph looks like:

Here are some examples of the questions they came up with to answer about our graphs!

At my small group table, we graphed m&ms.

We sorted them, made a tally chart,

organized our data in the graph,

then answered questions based on our graph.

You KNOW we had to eat the m&m's eventually, so we finally colored in our graphs. :)

I am part of our Sunshine Committee.  We try to do little things that will bring sunshine to our teachers and staff throughout the year in a variety of ways.  One of the favorite things we do on campus is called a Crash Cart!  Just like in a hospital when someone is in danger and they call for a crash cart, sometime teachers are in need of a fast boost!  So, we have our OWN version of a crash cart.  It's a cart we push around to each teacher's classroom and give them a little snack to brighten their day.  

Here are the ingredients for a really healthy snack.  :)

 

I made some DELICIOUS popcorn and then covered it in white almond bark, sprinkles and m&m's. If you've never had it before, do yourself a favor and look it up on Pinterest!  It's uh-mazing.

I had two little helpers that made my work SO much easier….or something.  :)

This is a picture of orneriness.  

I also bought some cute Easter themed shortbread and sprinkles cookies and m&m cookies, arranged them cutely on my Texas Tech serving tray and, voila! Crash Cart success.  

How would you feel if someone opened your classroom door and offered YOU this kind of treat! Yup. Day brightener, for sure.

We learned about what creates imagery in poetry this week.  We talked about rhythm, repetition and rhyme.  We read several poems to listen and look for these three things, and spent time listening to poetry with our eyes closed to try and create images in our heads from the words in the poems.  We created this poem tree to remind us of the three things used to help create imagery in poetry.  

The topic: What creates IMAGERY in poetry?

The leaves served as a web - the topic in the middle, and the three things about that topic attached around it. 

(If you are a CAFÉ lover, don't look TOO closely at this picture.  At this point in the year, my walls are FULL and I have temporarily covered my CAFÉ board to hang our tree!!)

Each part of the tree had examples for them to refer to to help them remember what the words rhythm, repetition and rhyme mean.

Light it Up Blue

Just want to give everyone a quick reminder that this coming Thursday, April 2nd, is Autism Awareness Day!  Show your support by wearing blue!

Here are some fun facts according to AutismSpeaks.org

Did you know ...

• Autism now affects 1 in 68 children and 1 in 42 boys
• Autism prevalence figures are growing
• Autism is the fastest-growing developmental disorder in the U.S.
• Autism costs a family $60,000 a year on average
• Boys are nearly five times more likely than girls to have autism
• There is no medical detection or cure for autism

Here's a video about Light It Up Blue:

I wanted to let you guys know that I have been working on several NO PREP! topics and have several up and ready in my TPT store.  You can click each picture below to check them out!

My whole store is on sale today and Saturday, so if you want to purchase one, now is the time!

That is my Five for Friday!  I hope the week treated you well and that you get recharged over the weekend with friends, family, church, sleep, Netflix-binging, whatever floats your boat!