The purpose of mental math is to:

• Stimulate focus
• Practice for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division facts
• Exercise working memory

The most significant benefit for mental math is the exercise for working memory.  The working memory is not the short term or long term memories but the part of the memory that retrieves and manipulates info and holds it briefly for output.  By asking students to solve simple, sequential math questions mentally we can support this working memory.

Activity

Mental math questions take two forms: simple equations and number sequences. We do not officially mark these questions in front of the students but observe any difficulties the student may be having with their calculations. Slowly we can increase the number of items in the calculations, the number in the sequence and level of difficulty.
     An example is:

1. 6+2+1=
2. 5+3+2+1=
3. 4,5,7,23,1 =
4. 9,4,87,1 =
5. 10+3+2+1+6 =

We generally give 5 at a time and slowly raise this number to 10.   The children are then invited to give the instructor 5 questions that they design. The children can mark their instructors and have the stipulation that they must be able to answer the questions. There is a designated sheet in the binder for this purpose.

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