As a university supervisor of pre-service teachers, I’ve seen my share of bad lessons.\u00a0 Among the most painful were when student teachers would try to liven up their lessons to impress me by having the students do a math game.\u00a0 My student teachers wanted their students to learn math facts and to do so in a fun way.\u00a0 The picture above is typical of what I would see.\u00a0 Here are the reasons that most multiplication games that the student teachers implemented were awful.<\/p>\n
(For multiplication games that work in and out of the classroom, check out Rocket Math’s\u00a0Worksheet Program<\/a> and Online Game<\/a>.)<\/p>\n As you can see in the picture above, all but one of the students are just waiting for their turn.\u00a0 They aren’t doing math.\u00a0 The students are just watching the student who is playing.\u00a0 No one likes waiting, and your students are no exception.\u00a0 Any game that has turn-taking among more than two students wastes time.<\/p>\n Make sure your multiplication games are structured so all or most students are engaged and playing all the time.<\/strong>\u00a0 You want students to have as much engaging practice as possible while practicing math facts at speed.\u00a0 If everyone can be doing that at the same time, that’s optimal.\u00a0 No more than two students should be taking turns at a time.<\/p>\n Learning math facts involves memorizing these facts so that students know them by memory, by recall.\u00a0 Committing facts to memory is why there is a need for lots of practice.\u00a0 If the game allows time for students to count on their fingers or use some other strategy for figuring out the answer to facts, then there is no incentive for students to get better.<\/p>\n In the lower left corner of the picture you can see one student counting on their fingers\u2014which is better than just watching\u2014but is not learning the facts, it is just figuring them out.\u00a0 The most able students in an elementary school are able to memorize facts on their own when they tire of figuring them out day in and day out.\u00a0 But the rest of the students will just do their work patiently year after year without memorizing if you don’t create the conditions for them to memorize facts.<\/p>\n Make sure that your multiplication games reward remembering facts quickly rather than just figuring them out.<\/strong>\u00a0 Speed should be the main factor after accuracy.\u00a0 Fast-paced games are more fun and the point should be that the more facts you learn the better you’ll do.<\/p>\n It is a basic fact of learning that no one can memorize a bunch of similar things all at once.\u00a0 To memorize information, like math facts, the learner must work on a few, two to four facts, at a time.\u00a0 With sufficient practice, every learner can memorize a small number of math facts. Once learners master a set of math facts, they can learn another batch.\u00a0 But if a whole lot are presented all at once, it is impossible for the learner to memorize them.<\/p>\n Make sure your multiplication games are structured so that each student is presented with only facts they know.<\/strong>\u00a0 A good game presents only a few facts at a time.\u00a0 As students learn some of the math facts, more can be added, but at a pace that allows the learner to keep up.\u00a0 The optimal learning conditions are for the learner to have a few things to learn in a sea of already mastered material.<\/p>\n We designed Rocket Math games to help kids gradually (and successfully) master math skills.\u00a0Students use Rocket Math’s\u00a0Worksheet Program<\/a> to practice with partners, then take timings. Students can also individually develop math fact fluency\u2014from any device, anywhere, any time of day\u2014with Rocket Math’s Online Game<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a university supervisor of pre-service teachers, I’ve seen my share of bad lessons.\u00a0 Among the most painful were when student teachers would try to liven up their lessons to impress me by having the students do a math game.\u00a0 My student teachers wanted their students to learn math facts and to do so in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":837,"featured_media":38583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0},"categories":[123,101,106],"tags":[35,37,43,127,47,61],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38582"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/837"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38582"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38733,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38582\/revisions\/38733"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Waiting for your turn at a multiplication game is not learning!<\/h2>\n
A multiplication game that allows using a known strategy to figure out facts (like finger counting) is not learning!<\/h2>\n
Multiplication games that randomly present ALL the facts make learning impossible.<\/h2>\n
Rocket Math Multiplication Games<\/strong><\/h2>\n