A major goal of mine this year is that all students will leave my class fluent in their multiplication facts through to twelve. We are making great strides in this area already. Over four minutes have already been knocked off the class average time.
I gave the students a pre-test during the first week of term. 50 questions, ten minutes maximum. One girl started the year on 37 facts correct and a time of 5:57. After ten weeks she had improved her accuracy to 48 and her time to 2:12. Another girl went from 36 correct to 37 and improved her time by almost six minutes. Our class standout story was a girl who knocked over seven minutes off her time while going from 43 correct to 48. Wow!
Next term I plan to work with all the students who are still take over four minutes. On Monday I will give the students in this group a pre-test in a particular table. Those students who have great recall in this table will continue on with their partner games and computer work to improve speed. The students who don't have great recall will work with me during the week using the Math Mammoth Multiplication book as a guide.
I hope that this will really help the students continue the amazing progress they have made over first term.
Congratulations on your student improvements! If you have computer access in your classroom, I have an online game that can really help. http://mathfactspro.com is like an intelligent tutor, working with each student on their basic math facts. It adjusts the difficulty and speed to each student, never too hard, or too easy, just focusing on the facts that are closest to being memorized, because too many facts is ineffective. (It knows the difference between memorized and skip counting speeds.) At the end, there is a printout to show what they know, and what they should work on. This lite version is always free. If you create an account, the effectiveness is greatly increased, and you can track progress. You can try it out with your 5 toughest students free for a year, or all your students free for 30 days. If it works for you, the cost for an account is only $1/student/year. I hope it helps,
ReplyDeleteMark Berg
Math Facts Pro