Strategy Practice

The main purpose of strategy practice sets is to develop speed in using the various strategies. Do Not use the practice sets until students are using the strategy you intend to pracice. Timed tests will not help students learn a new thinking strategy. Premature use of timed tests will encourage students to guess or not answer some problems because they do not have an efficient way to solve them. Repeated failure to be able to answer quickly will convince the students that mathematics is hard, and they are not able to make sense of it.

Build success experiences into timed tests. Work with only a few facts at a time and with only facts for which the students have an efficient thinking strategy in their arsenal of mental tools. Plan timed tests in ways that enable all students to be successful on the first few. Then challenge them to answer each row of problems a little faster.

After students are already using a strategy and they begin to practice that strategy with these timed tests, they will soon be using the thinking quickly enough to solve basic facts problems in 2 to 3 seconds per problem. Rember it is important that these timed tests not be used until after the students have the thinking strategy needed to arrive at the answer.

Example

Count On Practice - Vertical

Name__________________ Date_________
Work the problems across each row. Stop at
the end of each row. Do as many as you can.

Count On Practice - Horizontal

Name__________________ Date_________
Work the problems across each row. Stop at
the end of each row. Do as many as you can.

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