Let’s be clear—students need to have automaticity with their basic facts. What’s changed is the way we teach facts, moving away from rote memorization toward a strategy-based approach. Students learn unknown facts by reasoning about facts they know. For example, a student might not automatically know 6 + 7. If they know, however, that 6 + 6 is 12 then they can reason that 6 + 7 must be 13, because 6 + 7 is just one more than 6 + 6. Moving students from reasoning to mastery takes practice. Today, I have two free websites for developing math fact mastery.
- XtraMath This free website uses pretests to determine students’ needs and then tracks student progress and adjusts their practice. Parents receive weekly emails showing their child’s progress. There is also a premium version with more features as well as mobile apps.
- Arcademic Skillbuilders This free website uses highly engaging video arcade-type games that kids will want to play. Many of the games have settings that let kids focus on certain facts. This site is constantly adding new games, and they now offer both iPhone and Droid apps (for a small charge).
Both are great options for use in the classroom or to share with your parents!
thank you for this post! We had factmaster, but the company shut it down right in the middle of the year and the kids are crushed!!!! I will look into these!!!!
Amy Burton
My kids LOVE Arcademics!
Thanks for the websites.
We just played he arcademics jet ski game today. (the one that you have the screen shot of above) I have it and several other games linked to my smartboard calendar for May and the kids went absolutely nuts over it!
I’ll bet they did! That would be awesome on a smartboard!
Wow! Thanks for the link! My kids will love this!
Holly
Thanks for the. Help
My pleasure!
My students detest Xtra Math. They do love 99 Math and the fact fluency part of Freckle. Thank you for all of your work with your blog and your products.
Yep, it’s not the most engaging, but I love that it’s personalized. I alternate it with other sites and games.