There are so many different strategies to teach students math facts. But there is one that I use all the time as an adult, and because of that, I find great value in teaching students it. And it is the Make Ten Strategy. In this blog post, I will be giving you the steps to teach the Make Ten Strategy to your students.
Learning math fact strategies help students become fluent in math facts. For other tips to get your students to math fact fluency, download my free workbook for teachers: The 7 Steps to Math Fact Fluency.
Make Ten Strategy
With the Make Ten Strategy, if I am thinking of the fact 8+3. I automatically think, 8+2=10. 3 is one more than 2. So the answer is 11!
We want students to do the same with the make ten strategy. We want them to automatically think about how they will get to ten, and then the leftovers. So this is how I teach the Make Ten Strategy to make students.
First off, students need to know all of the ways to Make Ten. They need to work with ways to break apart ten to get different addends. Then commit these to memory. We want them to know:
1+9=10
2+8=10
3+7=10
4+6=10
5+5=10
6+4=10
7+3=10
8+2=10
9+1=10
Hopefully students can use these patterns to help them learn.
Next, you want students to practice how to see the Make Ten Strategy visually. Model this strategy to your students a lot! Put ten frames on your white board and use them all the time. Help students see how they can break apart numbers to make ten. And put in the leftovers. It’s great because just by looking at the ten frames, they can see the answer.
Then, give students plenty of practice. I like to teach my students how to draw ten frames. I tell them to draw a rectangle, one line across, and then four lines down. Then they can solve math fact problems by drawing in dots in the ten frames.
Students need lots of practice with ten frames for the strategy to become a mental strategy. So I love to have my students use task cards in centers or as a whole group scoot activity to get in even more practice. Find the task cards I use here!
To make practicing even more fun for students, I add in Make Ten Math Fact Games. I have a Make Ten Math Facts Memory Match game students love to play as a fast finisher activity.
They also love to play Make Ten Math Facts Go Fish as a fast finisher activity.
Once students do it visually so many times, they will begin to use it mentally. Continue to model this when math facts come up in your regular math lessons. Think out loud for students. For example if the math fact 7+5 comes up you can model this by saying, “I know that 7 is pretty close to ten… How can I split up fact to get 7 to 10? Oh! I could split it into 3 and 2. 7+3=10 and two more is 12. So the answer is 12!”
Once they have seen you model thinking through it, get students more involved by asking them questions on how they are going to split the number into ten.
So let’s recap a little! In order to teach the Make Ten Strategy make sure students memorize all the ways to make ten. Next have students practice the strategy visually using ten frames. Have them practice A LOT! Use task cards and games to engage students. Then model and think out loud on how to use the strategy mentally. Then get students involved by asking questions.
I hope that you have found this blog post helping in teaching this math fact strategy. To learn about the other math fact strategies to teach students, read this blog post here.
Looking for more ways to help students become fluent in math facts? Download my free guide for teachers: The 7 Steps to Math Fact Fluency.
