Basic Facts

Basic facts. Basic facts. Basic facts.
I am sure you hear all the time from any teacher your children have ever had how IMPORTANT fluency in basic facts is. This is because it is true.

Basic facts are the BUILDING BLOCKS of any math your child will do in the future. I student taught in third grade and if there was one huge mistake I frequently saw in harder math (such as double digit multiplication, long division, etc.) it was an error within a problem dealing with a BASIC FACT.

Yesterday I gave the kids a two minute timed assessment consisting of 18 addition and 18 subtraction basic facts (I only did numbers where the sum or difference was equal to ten or less.). A few of these turned out to be decent-great, but the majority of the results have me worried.

It needs to be our goal as a team (teacher and parents) to help basic fact fluency in addition and subtraction. It is vital to your child succeeding in later math skills that build on this. They should be knowing these from memory, and the only way to do this is practice.

I encourage you to buy some addition and subtraction flash cards and practice nightly (even if just for five minutes a night) every night on each.

Here is a website also where your kids can work on these facts.
http://www.playkidsgames.com/games/mathfact/mathFact.htm

When you go to this site, click UP TO 5 for difficulty, add or subtract for operation, and select two minutes to set the game for your child. As they improve, change it to five minutes. If your child builds strong fluency, maybe even up the ante to UP TO 10 for difficulty.

Thank you for your cooperation in ensuring your child builds fluency in basic addition and subtraction facts. This is a great way that you can help them in their success at home.

Melissa