Helping Third Grade Students with Addition Facts

In the typical elementary classroom, students are expected to learn and master their addition facts through countless practice problems and rote memoriza- tion. Yet for many teachers, the biggest mathematical frustration is students not knowing their basic facts. For students, this creates a problem as the math- ematical concepts build on each other and become more difficult. Students work with applications of new ideas, yet without a firm grasp of basic mathematics they become bogged down in the “simple” computations. The longer students go without knowing their facts, the longer they struggle through the related mathematical topics.