Mental Computation - Blake Education

Mental computations includes having strategies for quickly working out answers to addition, subtraction, multiplication and division questions as well as having strategies to make visible the thinking that went into them. With this in mind Natural Maths created the Mental Computation using Natural Maths Strategies poster book series published by Blake Education. The intention is that as students use efficient strategies for adding and subtracting they will develop automaticity with them and will move from having to mentally compute to having instant recall of many facts, but with deep understanding underpinning them.

The poster books present a systematic and developmental sequence of mental strategies. Print the poster as A3, A4, A5 or smaller in colour or black and white to meet you classroom needs.

A clever teacher

We love it when we find clever teachers making use of our materials in ways that we had not thought of. One such teacher printed out the posters from the CD in the back of the book, onto playing card sized card. Laminated them and made each student a set held together by a shower curtain ring. When we visited her classroom the students often flicked through the mini posters as they tried to decide which strategy would be most effective for the problem being solved.

The Mental Computation books suggest activities and investigations that allow students to apply and to show their understanding of the strategies and to develop confidence in using strategies to solve arithmetical problems.

These books can be purchased from Blake Education - click here to go to their site.