Make Math Practice a Habit

In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell refers to the 10,000-hour rule. This rule implies that it takes roughly 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at anything. Although there are critics, most would agree that if we look closely at experts in many fields, we will find the stepping stones along the way in the form of significant units of time spent practicing.

For students, practicing math daily can help with the retention of foundation skills even as new skills are introduced. In particular, many students seem to need significant practice with addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division algorithms. Practice can be assigned for morning work, warm-ups, take-home practice, distance learning packets, tutoring, or extra help.

Practice can take the form of copying problems off the board into a notebook, worksheets, or digital practice. Copying problems off the board will help with eye-hand coordination. Worksheets can save teachers time and offer an answer key. Finally, there are plenty of websites that offer quick practice in the form of games and interactive learning.

If you have students practice by copying a few problems off the board or by solving problems on worksheets each day, you could give students time to explain how several problems are solved. The process of explaining will further help students retain how to complete the algorithms. It is important that students who are struggling and more confident students be allowed to explain how to solve the problems. Of course, the teacher would support struggling students to be sure they were confident enough to present a solution to the class.

These 3 printable resources each provide 20 days of practice. With these worksheets, students solve just 4 problems each day, and there is plenty of space to show work. The worksheets can be alternated with writing problems on the board and digital practice for variety.

Daily Math Practice Fall Theme
Daily Math Practice Winter Theme
Daily Math Practice Spring Theme

Are you a subscriber yet?

FREE Activity for new subscribers:  Sign up for the Fourth Grade Frenzy newsletter!

Click the star to follow my TpT store! ⭐