1st Grade: Fact Fluency

Addition and subtraction fact fluency is challenging to teach because students need a lot of practice and cannot be expected to know all their facts at the end of a single lesson. Having a bilingual model with 2 classrooms has a ton of advantages, with one being an additional math block to work on number fluency and problem solving. While students are working on fact strategies in the primary language of instruction, there are several routines that can be done in the supporting language to push them to mastery of these important facts.

Below are 3 very important types of facts and a couple routines that could be done daily to practice:

• Making Ten
• Students find a partner on the carpet. Partner A hold up any amount of fingers that they choose. Partner B holds up the rest of the fingers necessary to make 10 and says the number sentence.

Example:

Student A holds up 4 fingers

Student B holds up 6 fingers and says "4 and 6 is 10"

Then students switch and partner B holds up fingers first

• Teacher flashes a ten frame and students hold up how many more they need to make 10.

Example:

Teacher shows the following ten frame:

Students hold up 1 finger, and together say "9 and 1 is 10"

• 10 more/ 10 less
• Practice counting by tens, starting with any number on the hundreds chart.

Example:
Point to 6 on the hundreds chart and students count, "6, 16, 26, 36". Talk about and make notes of patterns when counting by tens (which is the same as adding ten). You can see the first day of the chart, we started at 6 and the second day we started at 3. You can continue to use the same chart and just document with different colors for multiple days.

• Flash a dot card as the starting numbers. Students write what is 10 more on their whiteboard.

Example:

Students would write 15 on their white board because 10 more than 5 is 15

• Doubles 
• You  can play the same game that students played using their fingers to practice making 10. Partner A holds up fingers, Partner B has to hold up the same amount and say the doubles fact. 
• You can also play the dot card game from 10 more. Hold up a card and they double it

Example

Students write 5 + 5 = 10

Students love playing math games and these are quick, fun whole group routines that will really help your students master the basic facts!