Fact Fluency Part 1:  4 Types of Addition & Multiplication Facts

As I was looking over my presentation for this week at NCTM and getting sidetracked by checking Tweets about NCSM (which I didn’t get to attend this year), I saw a few tweets about Steven Leinwand and Patsy Kanter’s presentation at NCSM and how well it connects to my presentation for NCTM (tomorrow, 4/14) and it sparked me to write this post about building addition and multiplication fact fluency.

I wrote a book a few years ago that included this addition fact chart and since then I also created one for multiplication:

I share these with teachers when I do math professional development trainings, but I’ve never written about them on here.  The idea is that the old way of teaching kids to learn isolated facts should be retired and in its place should be the idea that facts are related AND that certain facts come easier than others.  Thus there is really only 4 types of facts that students need to “learn” that then help them with all the other facts:

4 Types of Addition Facts:

Orange: Doubles

Green: Make 10

Blue: 10 + something

Purple: Adding Zero

4 Types of Multiplication Facts:

Green: x2

Red: x10

Blue: x5

Purple: Properties (x1 and x0)

If you focus heavily on those 4 types of facts PLUS building your students’ number sense so that they can use number relationships to help them derive the related facts to those 4 types of facts, teaching the “facts” becomes a whole lot easier. I.E. If a child knows 3 + 3 (an Orange fact) AND they know how numbers relate to each other, then 3 + 4 (lighter Orange fact) is a piece of cake.  That is the case for all those lighter colored facts in both charts, if you know your x10 facts (Red fact), that can help you with your x9 and x8 facts (lighter Red facts)….but,only if you understand how the numbers relate to each other.

So, stay tuned for Part 2 of Fact Fluency where I will tell you the biggest mistake we make when trying to teach fact fluency…..and that I am saving until AFTER my presentation tomorrow or else you wouldn’t come to it.  But for those unable to make it, I’ll share after the session.