Dear Parents,
As you know the students have begun memorizing their multiplication facts.
A timed assessment will be given each Friday (starting in December) to evaluate their fluency of multiplication facts. Each assessment on Friday has 100 problems and the time will decrease as the months go on. Students will need to “test out” of this test by scoring a 90 or higher. Once a student is able to do that they will no longer take the drills unless they want to for practice.
Students are going to begin taking short quizzes on the individual times tables, the schedule is below.
Wednesday: 11/16: 2
Friday 11/18: 3
Monday 11/21: 4
Wednesday 11/23: 5
Tuesday 11/29: 6
Thursday 12/01: 7
Monday 12/05: 8
Wednesday 12/07: 9
Friday 12/09: 11 (plus a 100 problem quiz in the afternoon)
Monday 12/12: 12
Please help your child practice his/her multiplication facts nightly. When you are
doing drills to memorize, explain to your child that the goal is to memorize the facts (to recall from memory) and not to get the answers by counting or some other method. Just like your child probably has memorized your address and phone number, now he/she is going to memorize multiplication facts. You can easily see if the student is trying to count because producing the answer takes much more time. You should expect the answers from the child immediately when you are drilling. If he/she doesn't know the answer readily, then tell him/her the right answer.
Usually short drill sessions are best. You can drill for 5-8 minutes a night, depending on the child.
Flashcards are a wonderful resource and can be purchased rather inexpensively at local dollar stores. In class, students made flashcards using blank index cards as well.
In addition, there are many websites and apps that offer drills, games, strategies, and
activities to help students learn their facts. In class we use Fact Dash and the students seem to enjoy it. Thank you so much for your time and cooperation, if you have any questions feel free to contact me.
Mrs. Taylor