Building Fact Fluency


Try Sample Lessons from Building Fact Fluency: A Toolkit for Addition & Subtraction.

The Building Fact Fluency toolkit is designed around multiple contextual themes that invite students to explore seven foundational and derived strategies. Each of the seven strategies is taught through three real-world contexts supported by a Lesson String of related activities, tasks, and games.

Table of addition and subtraction grades K through 2. Strategy and context

Lemonade Sample Lesson String

Here’s a sample of the Lesson String that supports the Lemonade context.

Image Talks

Image Talks are short routines, similar to Number Talks, except based on a photograph or series of photographs of everyday objects, rather than numerals. 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.

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Anchor Problems

Rich, problem-based lessons support students’ reasoning about addition and subtraction (in English and Spanish).

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Tool Talks

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. The Tool Talk in a Lesson String is intended to be taught after the Image Talk.

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Contextualized Practice Problems

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).

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Number Talk

Powerful short, mental math routines prompt students to talk about different ways they can mentally solve computation problems.

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Games For Purposeful Practice

The toolkit contains 29 different, highly engaging games, cards, playing counters, and dice needed for a whole class or small group to practice their number facts while thinking strategically and having fun.

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3-Act Math Task

3-Act Math 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 Math Tasks to be highly engaging and joyful.

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Online Resources Overview

Each toolkit includes access to robust online resources that include a variety of downloadable, printable, and projectable resources as well as built-in professional development including implementation support and on-demand professional learning videos.

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