Articles & Videos
Three essential steps for mental maths revision
Categories
Subscribe to our newsletters
Receive teaching resources and tips, exclusive special offers, useful product information and more!
Three essential steps for mental maths revision
Think Mentals 29/8/19
Mental computation – what’s it all about? Well, it involves using strategies to quickly and efficiently tackle maths problems in your head. While learning new strategies is crucial for computation success, it’s equally important to give students ample opportunities to revise previously learnt strategies. Follow our three essential steps to ensure revision is given the weight it deserves in your mental maths lessons.
1. Provide opportunities for daily revision
When it comes to students achieving fluency in mental computation, frequent practice is a key factor – and daily revision should be part of that picture.
Revision gives students a mental computation workout that’s different from simply practising a newly learnt strategy. Instead of applying what they’ve just learnt to a problem, revision questions require students to quickly recall the different strategies they’ve previously learnt, then determine the most effective one for solving the problem.
2. Understand what is being revised
Revision questions should target previously learnt strategies in a systematic way. This holds true whether you’re crafting your own mental maths questions, or using a ready-made resource like Think Mentals.
When you understand exactly which strategies students will be revising over the coming week, you can prepare accordingly. You may want to refresh your own memory on a specific strategy, in case it needs reteaching. Additionally, you may want to review students’ weekly assessment from when they first learnt that strategy.
Read the Strategy Overview Guide for Think Mentals Student Workbooks or Think Mentals Digital Classroom to see exactly when strategies are introduced and revised in each year level.
3. Pause and reteach when necessary
Sometimes, students may be struggling to apply a particular strategy during revision. If so, pause and reteach that strategy to ensure students don’t compound their errors.
When you’re revising a strategy, students often only need a quick refresher to get them back on track. Use the free projectable strategy snapshots from thinkmentalsanswers.com.au to focus class attention and recap the steps of a given strategy. Alternatively, if you have Think Mentals Digital Classroom, project the strategy video for students or have them watch the video on their own devices to help refresh their memories.