Math: Factswise

Building Basic Facts Fluency with FactsWise

Dear Parents,

Research has shown that long-term success in mathematics is closely tied to strong number sense, including fluency with basic facts. The sooner your child becomes fluent with her or his addition and subtraction facts, the better! Addition and subtraction of larger numbers will be much easier to master, and multiplication and division are easier to learn. Even algebra, introduced now in elementary school, will be easier to learn if your child does not have to use mental energy counting to solve addition and subtraction facts.

The FactsWise basic facts program has been designed based on international research. We know that countries where children learn their facts quickly and fluently seem to have at least three things in common:

• Children work on their facts at school and at home
• Children learn their facts with fives (e.g. 5+3 and 7+5) and within tens (e.g. 2+8 and 6+4) to build relationships that support strategic number sense
• Children are encouraged to develop strategies beyond counting (e.g., 9+7=10+6 and 13-4=(13-3)+1 or 13-4=(10-4)+3)

With this information in mind, this program progresses from facts less than five to facts with fives, to facts within tens and facts with tens. Once your child is fluent with these facts, we can then work on developing strategies that work equally well with the basic facts and with larger sums and differences (e.g., 8+7=10+5 uses the same strategy as 28+37=30+35).

The nine goals listed on the back of this letter are the same goals we will be studying at school. As part of your daily homework plan, we are asking that you spend 5 or 10 minutes working on basic facts. Please start with the Goal indicated by your teacher and use the following activities (or others like them) to help your child move beyond counting to more efficient strategies and memorization.

• FactsWise Pairs Practice – you will receive each goal’s practice page when your child matriculates to that goal
• FactsWise online flashcards, games, and quizzes – access to these online resources can be purchased from www.ellipsismath.com

Once your child no longer needs to count (using fingers or mentally) to solve the goal’s addition problems, move to the related subtraction facts. After this goal has been learned to automaticity, practice with all of the flashcards your child has worked on so far.

Repeat this procedure for each new goal, making sure that you first work with the new goal, and then review previous goal facts, before moving on to the next goal.