Building Fact Fluency: A Toolkit for Addition & Subtraction
by Graham Fletcher & Tracy Johnston Zager
Image Talks are short routines, similar to Number Talks, except based on a photograph or series of photographs of everyday objects, rather than numerals. All the images are hosted on the Companion Website so you can easily project the images or display them on a laptop or tablet. You can also find the first Image Talk for each context in the portable flipchart, which can work well for small groups and in a variety of locations. The Image Talks are designed to come early in the Lesson Strings because they activate students’ thinking about the context and elicit thinking about the strategies.
Rich problem-based lessons support students’ reasoning about addition and subtraction (in English and Spanish).
Tool Talks are short routines, similar in length to Image Talks or Number Talks. A Tool Talk is a series of photographs that provide opportunities for students to connect the meaning-making they have been doing within the context to slightly more abstract math tools. All the images are hosted on the website so you can easily project the images or display them on a laptop or tablet. You can also find the first Tool Talk for each context in the portable flipchart, which can work well for small groups or in a variety of locations. The Tool Talk in a Lesson String is intended to be taught after the Image Talk.
Collections of story problems provide ample opportunities for students to work deeply with the operations within each context, building connections with practice (in English and Spanish).
Powerful short, mental math routines prompt students to talk about different ways they can mentally solve computation problems.
The toolkit contains 29 different, highly engaging games, including all the gameboards, cards, playing counters, and dice needed for a whole class or small group to practice their number facts while thinking strategically and having fun.
3-Act Tasks are problem-based lessons that give students opportunities to mathematize the world. Not every context has a related 3-Act Math Task—we included them in the contexts that most invited storytelling and mathematical modeling. Students generally find 3-Act Tasks to be highly engaging and joyful.
