Goals in math teaching

With my daughter, we've been concentrating on simple addition problems and the topic of tens and ones. Right now we are working on these goals:

• Understand subtraction concept - she partially does
• Tens and ones - she partially understands. (I realize mastering place value well takes often years.)
• Understand something + 1 type problems - she partially does
• Memorize answers to double 2, double 3, etc doubling facts

And, we're heading towards these goals that are further away, yes, but I am keeping them constantly in mind:

• Memorizing all basic addition facts
• Learn to use those to do subraction problems

Having definite goals is important. Good math teachers know where students are supposed to be heading, and also how to get there.

Make sure you know (and understand!) what the final and intermediate goals are. If you are simply following the math book page by page, it's like walking on a road while looking down at the road - not knowing exactly where the road is leading.

When you have the final goals down pat, you can often jump back and forth in your math book, skip pages or provide extra practice according to need.

Of course to do this, the teacher needs to understand the math beforehand and know how it's structured, how one concept leads to another. Soon I will be posting a review on a book that can help homeschoolers to do just that.

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I also often have my dd fill in 10x10 grid with numbers from 1 to 100. The other day, after filling it, I asked her to color yellow all whole tens, and then color pink all those that end in five. Okay, after those were done, she asked to continue coloring, and before I knew it, the little artist in her took over and the whole grid turned into a rainbow!
Well I thought you might enjoy it too so here it is:



P.S. You can make similar number grid worksheets (either partially filled in or not at all) for counting and skip-counting at www.homeschoolmath.net/worksheets/number-charts.php