Summer Basic Facts Practice

Students may easily lose fact mastery over the summer without some kind of regular practice.  Parents may help students retain mastery by utilizing small moments of time on a daily basis.  Here are some suggestions:

• Mad Minute:  insert a facts worksheet into a page protector.  The student uses a dry-erase marker to complete as many facts as possible in one minute.  Many students respond positively to this experience as it's only a minute.  They can practice graphing skills by graphing the number of correct facts for each day.
• Who Has? Card Decks:  read about and download Who Has? cards from Mathwire's collection, print out the labels and apply to index cards to easily create a deck.  Shuffle the deck and deal out the cards.  Each player turns over his/her cards.  The person who has the I have 0. card begins.  After reading a card, the player turns over that card, and play continues.  The first player to read all of his/her cards wins.  NOTE:  This is a totally random winning, but students seem to be challenged by the prospect of "winning."

• Contig:  Play this game to help older students develop fact fluency with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts.  The beauty of the Contig game is that students will practice facts for several options, searching for the move that yields the most points.  Download the Contig game mat and directions from Mathwire.