Then you're shocked when a basic fact comes up in their work and your students revert back to counting on fingers or they just stare at the fact blankly.
Learning strategies is just part of becoming proficient with math facts, kids have to know when to use each strategy. Fact sorting activities like this one can help kids begin to look at a fact and determine what will be the best strategy for solving it.
Each student gets two pages. One page with facts (on pigs, because it's fun!) and the other page with pig pens for several fact strategies.
First, kids cut out the pig facts.
Then they glue the fact into the correct pen based on the strategy that should be used. If they are just adding 1 or 2, the strategy should be "count on." If the addends are just one number apart (like 5 +6) they should be using the strategy "doubles plus one."
There is a cheat sheet included with all the strategies and an explanation just in case you're unfamiliar with any of them.
Enjoy!
Hannah Braun
