“Here are some flashcards that have a visual representation and teach the commutative property. So often we talk about it just being the same thing…but really you must contextualize the problem. If you work at a restaurant and you have 3 groups of 7 people, that is very different than having 7 groups of 3 people. These cards help students to see that! They also are double-sided, so students can see the relationship between the facts. In many countries, this is how they teach the facts. The research says that we should teach the commutative facts together. In this way, students have fewer facts to learn. So for example, when they get to 2 x 7 they also learn 7 x 2 so by the time they are learning the 7’s, they start at 7 x 7 because they know all the other facts in the table because they learned them along the way“.
-Nicki Newton, August 2021 For more great resources check out Nicki’s books or ask us at ALRANBooks for help finding the right book for you to use this year. Nicki and her partners are always active in writing new books and creating new resources to help you understand the math you teach and discover new resources to use in your classroom.
These flashcards created by Nicki Newton are a great home-school connection for the teaching of division. Nicki’s concise explanation helps parents understand why the flashcards look different than the ones they may have used as a student. The cards can be downloaded and printed at home. Nicki has created cards for both multiplication and division.
