Oxton House Publishers, LLC

Nimble Numeracy

“Instructional programs from pre-kindergarten through grade 12 should enable all students to

• Understand numbers, ways of representing numbers, relationships among numbers, and number systems
• Understand meanings of operations and how they relate to each other
• Compute fluently and make reasonable estimates.”

The activities in Nimble Numeracy are easy to do with individuals, small groups, or whole classes of students.  Suggested wording for the teacher is included, but it is not a script that must be followed.  It  simply models what needs to be done and what kind of response is expected of the students.

Numeracy might be described as the ability to deal with numbers comfortably.  Some children come by that ability naturally; others
do not.  For those who don’t, the problem often stems from trouble with the language of numbers.  These students often learn arithmetic concepts with difficulty, process problems slowly, and compute inaccurately, even when they know the algorithms.  Many of them also do not read fluently and cannot process written arithmetic easily.  Often they come to school with a great deal of mathematical knowledge.  Nimble Numeracy  will help you help those students to unlock that knowledge.

Nimble Numeracy

Fluency in Counting and Basic Arithmetic

by Dr. Phyllis E. Fischer

This is a detailed, easy-to-read handbook for teachers, tutors, and parents who want to help their children develop fluent arithmetic skills.  It provides explicit teaching strategies for counting and basic arithmetic, with step-by-step details on how to teach our counting system, work with the base-ten place-value system, and teach adding/subtracting and multiplying/dividing as pairs of related operations.  Fluency with the language of numbers is a major theme.

Nimble Numeracy is compatible with all NCTM Standards-based curricula.

In particular, it addresses the Number and Operations Standard (see box at right).  It develops a solid understanding of the base-ten system, with teaching activities that help children master efficient ways to add and subtract large numbers.  It extends these ideas to understanding the relationship between addition and subtraction and between multiplication and division, and from there to a sense of how simple fractions work.

7"× 8½" perfect bound.
136 pages + 4 foldout charts
ISBN 1-881929-19-1   $19.95

To learn about Dr. Fischer’s Speed Drills for Arithmetic Facts, click here:

Arithmetic Drills

© 2006 Oxton House Publishers, LLC

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Number & Operations Standard, NCTM