As I hope you saw on our class newsletter, this week we are working on fact families. As you are working with your child on fact families, I thought a quick tutorial and explanation of how we do them may be beneficial and help YOU help your child! This is a fact family house. Just as we say we are RELATED to our family, the addition and subtraction facts in a given fact family are RELATED FACTS.
To help students understand fact families I tell students a little story about the Fact Family that helps them remember how to write out the 2 addition facts and 2 subtraction facts. The story goes something like this: There once was a fact family and they lived in a fact family house. There was BIG BOSS DADDY 9, Older Brother 6, and Little Baby Sister 3. Older Brother 6 and Little Baby Sister 3 decided to play a game. Older Brother got bossy and said "I want to go first!" So...... 6 + 3 = 9. Well, Little Baby Sister 3 did NOT like that at all. She said "That's not fair! I want to go first!" So....3 + 6 = 9. Well BIG BOSS DADDY 9 doesn't like all of that fussing and fighting from the kids. So he says he is going to start TAKING THINGS AWAY! He says "Older Brother 6, you should have known better! You're setting a bad example." So Older Brother 6 gets in trouble. 9 - 6 = 3. Little Baby Sister 3 snickers and says, "haha..yooooou got in troooouble." And Older Brother 6 says, "Thats not fair! She was fighting too!!" So Little Baby Sister 3 gets in trouble too. 9 - 3 = 6. And they all lived happily ever after. I know it sounds silly....but it helps kids identify which numbers are which.....and the order they go in. Most importantly they should know that in the 2 addition facts the BOSS (or greatest number) will go last. In a subtraction fact, the BOSS will be first. Try this at home! Try giving your student three numbers that belong in a fact family such as 6, 4, and 10. See if they can tell you which one is the BOSS and which one is "Little Baby Sister". See if they can write the 2 addition facts and 2 subtraction facts for the fact family. Here's the anchor chart we created as a class for Fact Families.
2 Comments
Tina Verhine
8/31/2016 08:22:08 am
Emma came home telling me all about "Big Boss Daddy". I love this idea!
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Mrs. Shannon
8/31/2016 10:12:12 am
Yay! I'm so glad Emma is talking about math at home and is picking up on the strategy to remember fact families! It does my heart good! :)
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Mrs. Shannon1st Grade Teacher at Tipton-Rosemark Academy Archives
October 2016
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