Content Area: Math
Grade: 1

Invitation
How can a teacher involve the students in the creation of their own addition tables and incorporate word processing skills? Learning math facts is essential in the first grade and number tables are a great way to organize the facts. This project shows first grade students how to use the columns in a word processing document to organize and enter their addition tables.

Tools
Computers, printer, word processing software; Template: Addition Table; paper addition tables

Situations
All activities in this project take place in the classroom. The project requires five class periods to cover facts 1-10.

Interactions
The teacher guides the students in creating a new document, adding a header, formatting columns, and using the Enter key to move from column to column. The teacher helps as needed during the project. The students assist each other.

Standards (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills)
The student recognizes patterns in numbers and operations. The student displays data in an organized form using basic word processing skills.

Tasks
The teacher reviews how tables can be used to display addition facts. The students create three columns on their word processing document using the “column controls”. Using the “insert header”, the students insert a header and add the title: “Addition Table/ By/ Name”. The students type in their addition facts into the columns starting with numeral one and progressing through numeral ten.

Assessment
The teacher bases the assessment of this assignment on the completion of the task. However, the main goal of the project is to introduce word processing skills in a non-threatening way to students who may have low reading and writing abilities.