Mental Arithmetic Flash Cards

These are downloadable, and meant to be printed or glued to light cardboard as robust flash cards, with the problem one side (eg 6-4), and the answer on the reverse side (2). The objective is to make a set of 10 to 50 different cards, all the same size, which can be presented rapidly by a peer mentor at school, or a sibling/parent at home. Any errors should be corrected immediately. The presentation set can be repeated, and shuffled as needed, until set mastery is achieved. Similar materials are also available in commercially printed form on card, usually in discrete sets for each arithmetic process.

The set may consist of only ADDITION initially, then MIXED ADDITION AND SUBTRACTION, then MULTIPLICATION only, then MIXED PROCESSES, featuring all 4 processes in random/shuffled order. Do not progress till there is about 90 % success rate or higher.

Continue to use mixed items for children with SLD in particular, even into middle primary grades and beyond , in order to emphasise the need for accurate switching between processes. The number of cards in a set can vary between 10 and 50 depending on the child’s proficiency and error rate.

This flash card practice may be helpful from grade level 3 right through to 10 for SLD children who continue to make erratic mistakes. Such practice can also be a regular peer paired activity for children without SLD who are seen to be making simple errors repeatedly.

Commercial “speed and accuracy” workbooks with rows of printed problems in each process were once widely used in primary schools, with speeded administration to emphasise rapid response, for daily class practice sessions from grade level 3. These are no longer “in print”, but variations based on a repeated heuristic, such as giving a random number and requiring repeated addition or subtraction of a single digit (e.g. 75 -4,-4,-4 etc), or providing a list of random numbers which must each be added, subtracted or multiplied by a single digit number. Similar activities can be generated around the throw of standard dice pieces.