Basic Facts gaps

And here we are talking about one of the other major gaps in our students' knowledge; basic facts. How does one address a gap in knowledge caused by lack of exposure and practise at a time when homework is considered "ineffective", there is less time for parents to be involved in their children's learning, and there are much more compelling activities than in the past?

One way of addressing the gap in basic facts knowledge is to increase exposure to everyday. This is done through use of simple flash cards and randomly going through about ten or so at a time. The series of flash cards was simple enough to produce using Google Slides.

Another way I have implemented with the higher ability learners is to do a Basic Facts quiz before every lesson. Students are automatically given immediate feedback on the correct answers, so the quiz also becomes a feedback based learning tool. After everyone has finished the quiz, I also briefly go over the questions that seemed to cause problems for many of the learners.

The quiz method had rapid increase in recall ability, initially starting with many students scoring in the low teens out of twenty and now most scoring above 25 out of 30.