Make Math Moments Virtual Summit Session by Jennifer Bay-Williams

Flashcards and multiplication charts rely on memorization. Skipping counting also leads to memorization. Explicit stategy instuction outperforms drills and memorization. Research has shown this.

Start by determining the facts and strategies the students DO know. This is the starting point to build off of.

Stategies to teach:

  • Make 10
  • Pretend a 10
  • Adding a Group
  • Doubling
  • Break Apart
  • Subtracting a Group
  • Near a Square
  • And more…
Jennifer Bay-Williams, the speaker, wrote Math Fact Fluency and the strategies and games she talked about are from the book.

Games

Games that can be helpful for practicing strategies:

  • Erase card game for Making 10 strategy (available online)
  • Go fish for 10
  • Slaute adapted for combinations of 10
  • Square deal for more than 10
  • Fixed Addend War
  • Sum War
  • Fixed Factor War

“Assess readiness of strategies and then see how they use them.”

Interview Questions

“What is a fact you know that could help you solve this problem?”

“What strategy might you use for this problem?”

Assessments:

Observations, Journal prompts, Interviews, Self-Assessments

Journal: “How many ways can you find 8×7?”

“Timed tests do not measue fluency!”

Timed tests misguide students to thinking that being good at math is about how fast you are!

Supporting studnets so that they do learn their facts (and develop fluency and confidence):

Do…

  • Determine readiness
  • Teach strategies visually
  • Play games
  • Use sentence frames
  • Engage students in self-assessment and decision-making

Don’t…

  • Use memorizing activities
  • Skip count to learn 6s, 7s, 8s, 9s
  • Give timed tests