Basic Facts Boxes

Basic Facts... a gap in knowledge that I never had when I was growing up. A gap in knowledge that prevents or hinders improvement in most areas of mathematics. How can Basic Facts knowledge in children, who are in some cases quite far behind expected ability, be brought back to average and boosted further?

Here's something I developed to give it a go.


This Google Sheet populates boxes with random addition and subtraction problems to solve. On entering an answer, the sheet checks the answer and gives immediate feedback. Another sheet in this Spreadsheet does the same for times tables and the corresponding division facts.

I tested the first version of this on my own pupils to limited success. The positive is that many of the kids wanted to keep going until they got everything correct. The negative was that they didn't take screenshots of the boards that had errors, so there was no record of their improvement.

A colleague, Robyn Anderson tested version 2 (without the times tables) with her class. You can read about her success and outcomes I never expected from this tool on her blog post.

The inspiration for this tool came from two places. The first being a Japanese tool for memorising basic facts and the second being Monty Jones's (Tāmaki College) spreadsheets for practising maths problems at secondary school level.

Feel free to copy it, use it, attribute it, and tell me about the successes and challenges you have had.