A fact family is a set of addition, subtraction sentences that involve the same number. Students can learn more about a fact family by using fact family worksheets. These are the perfect tools for practicing the process of building fact families for sets of given numbers, then applying them to subtraction, addition, division, and multiplication. Once your students grasp the relationship between these mathematical operations, it becomes less of a mystery, allowing them to move on to more complex problems.
Fact Family Worksheets
What is a fact family?
Teaching your students the meaning of fact families helps them understand better the relationships between numbers and the logical link between the mathematical operations of subtraction and addition. Then you can practice this concept with your students using fact family worksheets. Here are some interesting facts about this mathematical concept:
- It is one of the fundamental concepts taught to students.
- A fact family is a set of subtraction and addition equations or sentences that involve the same numbers. There are addition fact families, multiplication fact families, and more.
- Fact families are an easy way to help your students understand the relationship between numbers. With its help, your students can comprehend the relationship between subtraction and addition operations more logically.
Having three numbers gives you a fact family that explains the relationship between the given numbers. This fact family of three must have two subtraction equations and two
The importance of a fact family worksheets
You should teach fact families to your students as a fundamental concept and you should do so as early as the Kindergarten years. This concept helps your students understand other mathematical facts with ease, especially subtraction and addition, and how the concepts link with each other.
The concept isn’t that complicated but it helps develop your students’ number sense, especially in terms of how they relate with each other. The structure of fact family worksheets allows students to complete them within a couple of minutes. These fact family practice worksheets introduce your students to addition fact families, subtraction fact families, multiplication fact families, and division fact families.
Constant practice with these tools strengthens their understanding of the relationships between these operations allowing students to reinforce their proficiency of related facts, especially when they already know one or more members of a specific fact family. Fact family worksheets give your students a thorough workout whether you ask them to:
- Complete the gaps in mathematical facts
- Look for new ways to learn division or multiplication
- Complete fact family practice after they have learned the concept and seen several examples of how fact families work.
Just make sure to structure your worksheets to allow your students to use them for practice. There are sets for both subtraction and addition fact families, as well as, division and multiplication fact families. There are also different worksheets that focus on various fact families together with a number of fact family problems for those who already have a good grasp of the concept.
Students who already feel comfortable with the concepts of both operations but still have not memorized all of the math facts can rely on fact family worksheets as a great alternative to math-fact activities that concentrate on only one operation. If you have any advanced students, you can give them more complex fact family practice activities.
Fact Family Practice
Teaching the basics of fact families
In the early school years, students use subtraction and addition fact families to better comprehend the relationship between these operations and to become more proficient in subtraction and addition facts. You should introduce the simplest approaches so that your students can easily understand and come up with related facts on these fact families. Here are the most basic methods to use:
Method 1
Give your students the chance to use concrete manipulatives like linking cubes that they can take apart and put together physically to demonstrate fact families in a concrete way. While your students use these hands-on manipulatives, ask them to place the numbers into a number bond. This helps connect abstract and representative levels.
Method 2
You can also use other materials like colored disks to represent concrete tools. The difference between Method 1 where you would use linking cubes and this method that uses colored disks is that this one lacks a story context, thus, making the materials more challenging for students to work with.
But it is still recommended to use different types of concrete tools so that students can have the opportunity to generalize their observations when putting together the parts and taking them apart for the purpose of creating fact families.
A fun way to teach fact families
Generally, you can group fact families into three related numbers that can generate four different number sentences. Other fact families can create two subtraction number sentences and two addition number sentences. Then there are fact families that can create two division number sentences and two multiplication number sentences.
- A fun way for your students to learn, especially the younger ones, is to show the relationships of fact families by placing the numbers in a house.
- Draw a simple house with a square-shaped body and a triangular roof and attic. Place the numbers that are part of the family the windows of the attic. For instance, you will place the numbers 4, 6, and 10 in the windows of the attic.
- In the main body of the house, draw four big windows that will contain the fact family’s different mathematical operations. These include two addition and two subtraction fact families.
- Your students can write the numbers in the equations. Then you can give them a different set of numbers that add up to 10.
- This method illustrates how relationships can make math more approachable and fun for young students. Fact families can really help your students understand mathematical patterns.
If you have an interest in having different worksheets you can use at home or in school, you can find many fact family worksheets online. After downloading, you can customize them as needed or use them as is. After subtraction and addition, you would logically progress to division and multiplication fact families as your students advance to higher grades. Aside from the worksheets, there are also apps and games you can avail of for more fact family fun.
