I have a student who knows her basic + - x / facts in isolation but does not carry them over in practice. In other words, she does well on fact tests, including timed fluency tests, but she is very inconsistant in all applications. For example, in multi-step multiplication or division problems, she will follow the correct algorithm, but calculate incorrectly.
Any ideas?
I have the student work through the calculation with me orally, and exactly the opposite of the common habit, *slow down*. At first I write the work down and have the student tell me each step, then the student writes while telling me each step, and then the student does the problem while I sit beside and verify each step. Going through and making sure each step is done correctly and immediately correcting errors is what does the trick.
There is also the question of *how* the students knows the facts. If they are not really known, but found by counting tricks or by mnemonic tricks, there may just be too much junk in the poor kid’s mind to control both recalculating the facts and managing a larger computation. Simple memory practice, with question and answer tied together but without distractors, can help make things more efficient.