Fact Families

I started my fact family unit by drawing a picture of a house.  I asked the students what it was... and who lives there.  I explained that people who live in the same house are related.  OOPS!  Half of these kids have one person, if not more people, living in their house who are not related!  So I backtracked a little and explained that who you live with is your family.  Ok, moving on.  I drew three numbers in the attic of the house.  The "daddy" number at the top point, the "mommy" number to one side and the "baby" number to the other side.  I asked them how they were all connected.  I explained that they each had something to do with the others.  The kids had a really tough time with this so I had to suggest that the two small numbers added up to the big number and if you subtract one small number from the big number you get the other small number.  Then I showed them the facts that belong in the house and sent them to their desk with their own piece of construction paper.  I told them to draw a house, I gave them three numbers and they were supposed to write all the facts.  I have 20 kids... .two got it.  A disaster! You think I moved a little to fast?  :-) - Back to the drawing board.

The next day I brought them all to the carpet and we looked at connecting cubes and squares.  I put 3 connecting cubes in one square and four in the other.  I moved both sets to a big square.  I showed them the addition problem.  I moved one small set back and modeled the subtraction problem.  I moved both sets forward and modeled the turn around fact.  I moved the other small set back and modeled the other subtraction problem.  I put them in partners with their own squares and connecting cubes.  About three more got it.  Ok, making progress!

I visited the house idea again.  Now that I had some kids getting it they were able to help me with the lesson.  I used a premade house this time (learned my lesson on that!).  I modeled using a domino to get the "mommy" and "baby" numbers and then adding those together to get the "daddy" numbers.  We filled out the house as a class.  Next, I paired those 5 with 5 who weren't getting it at all and put the others in partners as well.  I gave each pair a domino.  They had to find the three numbers in the fact family and then find the four facts.  If they were successful, they brought me the page and I gave them each their own domino and house to complete on their own.  Once they did that successfully they were able to color the house to add to our fact family neighborhood.

More kids were getting it, but we needed to catch the rest of them.  So I made up a wiggle dance.  They held 4 fingers up on one hand, and five on the other.  We wiggled our left hand and shouted four.  We wiggled our right hand and shouted 5.  We put them together and wiggled our whole body while shouting nine.  We did this over and over again adding the words "Four ::wiggle:: plus Five ::wiggle:: equals Nine ::body wiggle::"  We repeated this with the turn around and subtraction facts.  Super fun.  

The activity I did yesterday has been my favorite so far.  I made five sets of signs (just sharpie on white copy paper) Each set contained three related numbers, an equal sign, and a plus (one one side)/minus (on the other) sign.  I asked for five volunteers.  I gave each volunteer a sign.  First we looked at the numbers in our fact family.  We found the daddy number, mommy number, and baby number.  We reviewed that the mommy and baby add up to the daddy.  We made this number sentence with our signs.  Then we did the turn around fact.  I stressed that the daddy number stayed at the end of the number sentence!  Next, we did the two subtraction facts and realized that, again, the daddy number did not move and stayed at the beginning of the number sentence.  After this was modeled I split the class into 4 groups of five.  I gave each group a set of signs (each set used different numbers).  I assigned a scribe.  Their job was to find all the facts in the fact family, write them down and be ready to present to the class.  They LOVED this.  I walked around the room and heard lots of great explaining going on.  No one dominated the conversation or just directed people around (which is great, because that happens a lot)  When they all had their facts written down each group had a chance to go to the front of the room.  They had to state the numbers in their fact family and then arrange themselves to show us each fact.  This physical movement helped out a lot. 

Have all of my kids mastered fact families?  NO!  Tomorrow I am going to split them into groups again and give each group an addition number sentence.  They are going to work together to find the other three facts in the family.  After that, I'm out of ideas.  Anyone else have any???????