Wondering about fact memorization in R&S Math 3...

[WaterLily]

We are on lesson 51 in R&S 3 and we paused last Friday to study facts b/c the book is kind of blowing right through them - multiplication that is. My son has definitely not memorized the 3's yet and now they're already moving on to the 4's. Honestly, he could probably use more practice with his addition and subtraction facts. (He has yet to complete a speed drill in under a minute.) So I'm wondering, do we keep moving through the book and just keep studying the facts as we go, or do we need to stop and not move past 3's until he has them down? Oh, and we do have the blacklines but I keep forgetting about them! I suppose now might be a good time to pull them out?!

 

And then there's flashcards. We do the lessons in the TM but I don't do the flashcards every time even though I should. We don't have R&S cards - I just have regular sets from the store, however I'm sometimes confused about what cards I'm supposed to be "flashing". For example, when it says "Add. and Sub. 11-13 flash cards" I guess this means all the facts where the answer is 11-13, right? So then I have to separate out those cards the night before? Does anyone have any thoughts or helpful hints regarding this?

[Garga]

Time to stop and master the previous material.

 

I use all the blacklines, but not every problem on them. (Does that make sense?) Like if the blackline has 9 rows of problems to do, I'll have ds do only 3 of the lines. I would strongly recommend the blacklines if you want him to master the facts. It takes me about 1/2 hour a week to scan and then print the ones I need, but it's so worth it.

 

Yes, about the flashcards, if it says "addition 11" it means every answer that adds up to 11.

 

Go through the flashcards and see which ones he doesn't know, then focus on those until he's got them.

 

Can you go back and re-do some of the old speed drills and see if he can do them now in under a minute? To see if there's improvement from the first time he did the drill?

[linders]

It seems to be easier to get one fact group down (the 3's, for example) before heading on to the next.

 

And you might be interested in multiplication.com - it has some cute games to practice multiplication facts and it is free! My DS8 gets to use it as a "treat" after the main math lesson and loves it. We haven't done computer-based games before, but I like its simplicity.

 

Best wishes!

[WaterLily]

Thank you both for sharing your thoughts. I think you're right re: stopping to master the facts we've already covered, so we'll do that. The speed drill idea was a great one! I had him do an older one and he was able to do it in under a minute! Yahoooo!!! ;) The best part is that he was so proud of himself since it's the first time he's done it. And of course it's good to see that he is definitely making progress. So anyway, we'll do some blacklines and flashcards and get caught up.

 

Oh, and thank you for the multiplication.com idea! Sounds like something he'd like so I'll check it out for sure!

[Penny]

Two of my kids are in R&S 5 and I can tell you that they STILL do speed drills with multiplication, addition, division, and subtraction. So, don't expect perfection just yet.

 

Also, my 3rd grader just memorized her upper times tables (6-9) in less than 2 days using 'Times Tales'. It is a goofy but wonderful resource that works.

 

Blessings,

 

Penny

[Ginger]

Ironically ds did R&S lesson 50 yesterday, and today I put the brakes on, and just did work with the 3's without using the text. I used Right Start Math with my dd when she learned her multiplication facts. So today we played a memory game that I had learned with her. Basically you have the numbers 1-10 (or you could go to 12, since R&S does) on one side of the table, and the products(3, 6, 9, ...etc.) on the other. In the middle is a paper with the skip counting 3's written on it in groups so that patterns are obvious(with the 3's it looks like this:

3 6 9

12 15 18

21 24 27

30 33 36

 

You can see a pattern going down each row in the one's and ten's column.

Not sure if that makes sense. Anyway, I think I'm going to let my son play this for the rest of the week, then our first week back after the holiday's. Hopefully that will help her solidify some of those. Oh, and on our 3rd and final round today, I took away the 'cheat sheet' to see if he could come up with the answers on his own--he struggled, but I could tell that some of them were clicking from familiarity.

 

Glad to see someone else is in the same boat as I am. I really felt he was about to get snow plowed with all the multiplication facts.

Oh, and I have to admit, I haven't done flashcards in the lessons for a while--things were just taking too long, and he has a very short attention span as it is. I'm hoping that with all the repetition R&S has, that they will sink in.