Helping students Master Facts

Coming from Junior grades I know that facts are important for students to help them with math.  In addition, I know that learning facts also helps students with solving problems.  However, whenever you talk to anyone this is such a bone of contention.  Some feel that facts are the most important parts of math and some feel they will be learned through problem solving and inquiry.  I tend to lie in the middle of these groups leaning moreso to the inquiry approach.  Don't get me wrong facts are very important to learn and are a critical part of mathematics.  They do help students; however, I also see the other part where students only know facts and cannot apply them to problems.  IN this case facts are harmful to students development because they keep trying to apply rote learning with no understanding.

So with this in mind what is a teacher to do?  I recently came upon some great advice from van De walle's book, Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally.  In his book he has a whole chapter on mastering basic facts.  Van de Walle offers three components to learning facts and none are through strict drill and or quantity of drilling facts.

His components are:

1) Help children develop a strong understanding of the operations and of number relations.


2) Develop efficient strategies for fact retrieval

3) provide practise in the use and selection of those strategies

This is great but what does this look like in a classroom.  I can't say for others but in my classroom this is how I have interpreted these components.

Number sense is beyond just learning algorithms or memorized facts.  You need to understand how numbers work together, their significance, decomposing and composing, and other mathematical reasoning.  All of these help you with mental facts, which in turn helps you with mastering basic facts.  In my classroom, we do a variety of things:
                              
                       a) String lessons: this is fifteen minutes before the problem where we practise mental facts.  These strategies relate to the problem and I hope that students start to apply them in the problem.  This might be adding by tens, using friendly numbers, adding with doubles, etc.

                      b) Problem Solving: chosing a proper problem is just as important to helping students learn math facts.  The problem you chose should allow students to practise their fact recall and not just a traditional algorithm.  In addition, when you debrief the problem there should be some talk about efficiency and using these facts.  This will promote student thinking in this area and see why its important to learn and use their facts.                       

                      c) Teacher Talk: Often when students talk about a strategy I will articulate with certain math talk.  So what you are telling me is this.... Your use of vocabulary will always assist student learning.  I also sometimes do think alouds of my thinking, to help student conversations.  This always is accompanied with talk about what students think I did.

                         b) Math games that focus on these skills.  All of our games in the classroom focus on certain skills.  It helps students practise their facts and learn about numbers beyond just pure memorization.  It also brings out talk among students and teacher.

In addition to this we also do math fact Mondays and Math game Friday.  During Monday my students do a "mad Minute" type of activity.  Though it is not truly a mad minute as it is more about practice of facts then of fast recall.  Students do have a time limit but it is more that it happens at the end of the day.  I will also like to say that my students asked for this activity and relish the moment when they can show me how much they have learned from the week before.  I give my students ten minutes to answer about 60 questions.  We also graph our results over the weeks and set goals for the next.  The emphasis is on goal setting and improving their individual learning.  Results are never shared among the students.  On Friday we do a whole period on math games.  This is important as it give students time to play and practise.  Even though that after finishing a problem they do get to play games not every child gets the same amount of time, this way they do.

Furthermore, Van deWalles chapter there are many great suggestions on the type of strategies that these things can bring out and is a read I recommend all teachers doing.

This only some of the things that I do in the classroom to assist in fact recall.  It is important but how you do facts is just as important.  How do you help with facts?  What type of activities do you use?  Love to here from you.

Keeping track of my Assessment

Today i was able to participate in our boards networking PD. During this PD session I was asked about how I recorded my assessment and keep track of my student learning.  I shared these ideas but when I was asked if I had this recorded down I said no.

So the topic of this blog is: keeping track of student learning.

I have used a number of techniques over my teaching career but some of the best have been during this year.  As technology improves so does recording of assessment.  Here are some of my assessment tools: 

Evernote:

At the start of the year I began using Evernote. Evernote is a great app that allows you to keep track of pretty much anything.  Now there are many out there who have used Evernote more then I have (in fact follow: @thenerdyteacher http://www.thenerdyteacher.com/) but to make the most of this app this is want I have done.

I have different notebooks for each child.  I also have different notebooks for math, language and my reading groups.  After each lesson I record a reflection of how the lesson went.  This may include things that surprise me, problems, next steps or just some pictures of the lesson.  I also record individual comments for my students that I am observing that day or for the particular lesson.  Along with these notes I also scan students assessment of learning or work samples to the kids notebooks for easier connection and recall.

By having all of these observational notes it allows me to refer back to problems and give better feedback to my students.  It also makes report cards a lot easier.  Now there is one down side, it takes time but this is far out waded by the fact that reports are easier to write.

Twitter and storify:

Now you may think that this is a little weird, twitter is assessment but it does help.  Since January I have been challenging myself to make my classroom more transparent and twitter has allowed me to do this, well in combination with storify. As my students are working I have been taking pictures and sending out tweets.  At the end of the day I use the storify app to organize my tweets in chronological order.  This in a way creates a small microblog of the day.  Now here is were the real assessment is.  With a snap shot of the day, I am able to reflect a lot more easier. In addition, it allows my students parents to see what their children are doing and help at home.

Wiki sites:

Now I used this a lot more last year but have used it this year.  Wiki sites are a great tool to store pics and videos of the classroom.  It is a secure site, so each person has a log in and password.  In addition, students can comment on work and look at previous questions.  I have slowy been converting to edmodo, which is the same site but with more cabilities. More work is needed for this.

Thes are some of the tools that in use pin creating assessment for my students learning.  There all great opportunities for reflection and a great start for flipping your classroom.  How do you keep track of your assessemnt? Would love to here your ideas.