Addition facts were moving very slowly for my daughter. Flash cards weren't helpful, writing the fact out wasn't that helpful, worksheets were helpful but slow.
On the advice of several people at the Well-trained Mind Forum, I got a Flashmaster. It has worked really well!
After you miss a fact 3 times in a row, they tell you the answer. Any fact you miss at least one time, they give you another problem, then the problem after that is the problem you just missed. That seems to be the perfect timing, it's been very effective. It also has several different modes. One mode gives you the last 15 problems you have missed. This is very nice, it's hard to keep up with normally. Doing all the ones she didn't know at once was frustrating to my daughter, so we do them offline. I've found that having her repeat the correct fact 3 times orally is the best way to get her to remember them.
The Flashmaster is also much faster than a worksheet for a young child who writes slowly, they can push a button much quicker than they can write out a number, so you can do a lot more math facts in the same amount of time. (It also does subtraction, multiplication, and division.)
wow - that's amazing!
ReplyDeleteOne thing I did with a boy in my Singapore Math class was to write the answers for him instead of having him write them out.
After the first one or two weeks, he could write them himself and he'd gotten much, much faster.
(He was in 4th grade, I think. Very slow, precise handwriting & classified SPED --- extremely high-end SPED.)
Several times, when I was pushing C. through Saxon Math at a brisk clip, I wrote out all the work for him.
One more reason to re-institute proper handwriting instruction and practice.
I wonder how similar the Flashmaster is to SuperMemo.