My students LOVE practicing their mental math skills, especially while walking down the hall, or waiting for PE to start. Some of their favorites include adding 11s, subtracting multiples of 10, and regrouping tens and ones. The beauty of these mental math exercises is that we can seamlessly differentiate the math and the numbers to be sure all of our students are successfully challenged.

~ Kate Bonsignore, Grade 2 Teacher, Weston Public Schools, Weston, MA

Mental Math exercises are whole class, lively, brief, and focus on skills practice to build students’ computational fluency. These exercises are done orally with children responding aloud.

Mental Math exercises:

  1. Build students’ computational fluency and math facts quickly
  2. Work students’ executive function skills (specifically working memory which is related to overall math achievement)
  3. Develop algebraic habits of mind and explicitly use properties of operations strategically to help students’ fluency

Mental Math exercises are very short and highly focused drills, spaced out over time—a few minutes a day rather than aggregated into a single lesson. Each exercise is intended to be lively, with no instruction “wrapped around” it – and because the exercises are focused, not random, children build ways of thinking about computation as well as fluency with the facts.

Mental Math exercises are designed to be used flexibly. Teachers may search by grade level(s) and then by topic(s) to choose exercises that best meet their students’ needs. Children, in turn, enjoy the energy, pace, and the competence they gain!

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  • Topic(s)

Found 90 Results

July 31, 2020

Counting Backward for 30 Seconds or 60 seconds

July 31, 2020

Hidden Fingers

July 31, 2020

Hidden Dots

July 31, 2020

Counting Forward and Backward by Tens

July 31, 2020

Counting by Tens Across 100

July 31, 2020

Counting by Tens Across 200

July 31, 2020

Ten More, Ten Less

July 31, 2020

Counting by Tens and Ones

July 31, 2020

Counting by Tens Past 100 and 200

July 31, 2020

How Close to 10? How Close to 20?

July 31, 2020

Making a Tens Sandwich

May 12, 2020

Counting by 10s, 20s, and 50s

May 20, 2020

Counting by 20s, 50s, and 100s

July 29, 2020

Counting with Dimes, Nickels, and Quarters

July 29, 2020

Adding 9 in Chains

July 29, 2020

Adding 12 in Chains

July 29, 2020

Subtracting 12 in Chains

July 29, 2020

Counting Coins and Bills

July 29, 2020

Reading and Writing Numbers in the Thousands

July 29, 2020

Coin and Bill Combinations