Mental Math Grade 6 Teacher's Guide

On the other hand, most students can benefit from the more difficult
problems even if they know how to use the written algorithm to solve them.
The emphasis here is on mental computation and on understanding the
place-value logic involved in the algorithms. In other cases, as in
multiplication by 5 (multiply by 10 and divide by 2), the skills involved are
useful for numbers of all sizes.
Practice and Reinforcement
In general, it is the frequency rather than the
length of practice that fosters retention. Thus
daily, brief practices of 5-10 minutes are most likely
to lead to success.
In general, it is the frequency rather than the length of practice that fosters
retention. Thus daily, brief practices of 5-10 minutes are most likely to lead
to success. Once a strategy has been taught, it is important to reinforce it.
The reinforcement or practice exercises should be varied in type, and focus
as much on the discussion of how students obtained their answers as on
the answers themselves.
The selection of appropriate exercises for the reinforcement of each
strategy is critical. The numbers should be ones for which the strategy
being practiced most aptly applies and, in addition to lists of number
expressions, the practice items should often include applications in
contexts such as money, measurements and data displays. Exercises
should be presented with both visual and oral prompts and the oral
prompts that you give should expose students to a variety of linguistic
descriptions for the operations. For example, 5 + 4 could be described as:
• the sum of 5 and 4
• 4 added to 5
• 5 add 4
• 5 plus 4
• 4 more than 5
• 5 and 4 etc.
10 Mental Math – Grade 6