Math Practice at Your Fingertips

Math Practice at Your Fingertips

My goal for this year was to add math games to my repertoire of teaching strategies as part of my regular classroom routine. I looked at this as the first step to moving towards a guided math program. Also our PLT group was working on ways to increase the level of math fact knowledge in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The Saskatchewan Curriculum recognizes that “mental mathematics is a combination of cognitive strategies that enhance flexible thinking and number sense. It is calculating mentally and reasoning about the relative size of quantities without the use of external memory aids. Mental mathematics enables students to determine answers and propose strategies without paper and pencil. It improves computational fluency and problem solving by developing efficiency, accuracy, and flexibility.” I also wanted to increase opportunities for communication and collaboration. Some of my math games involved building, creating and problem solving. Others involved competition and cooperation. I created a brochure that highlighted the favorite games of the students and it also provides links where teachers can find these games.