Reply To: Lesson 4-2: Automaticity vs. Memorization

[Jill Fulmer]

It is very difficult to build automaticity unless students have baseline facts that they know. They need hands-on experience with counting and quantity in the early years, especially using visual structures like 10 frames and rekenreks, and then drawing models and labeling them with numbers to move to representational and abstract. Games can provide great reinforcement of addition facts. Until kids can make 10, know (or readily derive) the sums of single-digit doubles, and can mentally juggle 2 more/less than those, there’s not a lot to build on to derive unknown facts from known ones. That, and being able to add/subtract 10 and multiples of 10 are the basic skills for which I wish every child had at least conscious competence when they come to me in 3rd grade!