STRENGTHENING THE SKILLS IN BASIC MULTIPLICATION FACTS OF GRADE

Learning multiplication facts is a key issues in Mathematics in primary schools. It is an essential part of our child's elementary education. Pupils who have mastered multiplication facts gain a solid foundation in Mathematics that will help them throughout middle school, high school and beyond.

Without strong foundation of numeracy skills, we could hardly use

mathematics effectively in real-life situations. Thus, taking the responsibility of teaching Mathematics in Elementary becomes a big challenge to all the teachers.

Since Mathematics is considered one of the difficult subjects and it generates negative standpoints among students, it needs a lot of patience, dedication and creativity in developing the numeracy skills among the pupils.

When facing difficulty in multiplication facts, the pupils will not be interested and bored to answer questions involving multiplication. Weakness in mastering of multiplication facts is causing them to fail to answer mathematics questions related to basic multiplication facts such as questions involving multiplication and division operation.

II. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Dr. Garces (2008), emphasized that Math is a continuous process that builds on prerequisite skills. Learning is sequential. Thus, it is important that each lesson is understood, because if the students miss one concept, they will miss all succeeding concepts. Students must really be encouraged to work independently to be able to develop speed and confidence in their work.

The weakness in mastering multiplication facts is one of the factors that will lead to low achievement in Mathematics.(Thai ;Yasin, 2016) It takes these students who struggle longer to finish their test.

This could have several negative outcomes. First, they could see that their peer are finished with their test and they could rush to finish. As a result they would not check over their work and could get additional problems wrong. Another issue is that they could get mentally fatigued during these tests. Students who have to spend more time figuring out the basic multiplication problems do not have sufficient time for the actual problem. Students also grow frustrated when they know they have not automatized these facts. When this occurs, students seem to not care as much to find the correct answer to a difficult problem. When the motivation is not there, students are less likely to try (Murayama,K.,Pekrun,R.,Lichtenfeld,S.,& Vom Hofe,R.,2013). In general, if the students knew the basics, they would be able to concentrate more on the in depth themes being taught.

Mastery of the basic Math facts is very essential in the teaching Mathematics in the elementary level. It is necessary to cope up in mastering the other learning competencies in Mathematics which leads to fluency. Moreover, Maghirang (2013) viewed that Mathematics is a continuous process that connects prior knowledge to understand new concepts. It is very important to know the mastery level of the respondents to be able to identify the least mastered competencies and be able to develop a program that will help the students in learning Mathematics. Researchers commonly agree that Math Fact fluency is essential for later success in more complex Mathematics such as Algebra (Geary 2011; Nelson et al. 2016). Considering the importance of mastering Math facts for advancing Mathematical thinking, researchers have identified effective practices for building fluency. Specifically, effective flu1ency-building instruction should incorporate modeling (Codding et al. 2011), provide ample drill and practice with high rates of response (Hawkins et al. 2017). Provide enough drill and practice for students to master Math facts.

Fluency is key for students to be successful in Mathematics. Experts agree that students' inabilities to evoke Math facts fluently can hinder their capabilities of attaining higher-order Math skills. Students who are not fluent in basic Math facts, such as multiplication facts 0-10, need to spend more of their thinking capacity on solving these facts. This causes a hindrance for solving more complex problems (Strother, 2010). However, it is problematic for students to grasp concepts such as multi-digit multiplication and division, adding and subtracting multi-digit numbers, or fraction if they do not have fluency with basic Math facts. Not only does this affect their education, but this can have negative effect on students' confidence. Students who have fluency with basic Math facts are able to learn difficult skills more easily.

Diana Sibenik (2010) in her research on effective ways of teaching multiplication revealed that multiplication can be taught to pupils in creative and enjoyable ways. As a teacher, it is important to know that multiplication concepts are taught in ways that pupils can successfully grasp the understanding and build on previous knowledge as well as gain new knowledge. Students should be given the opportunity to work in a small groups as they learn the multiplication skill through their interaction with one another. There are numerous drills and strategies available to teach these subjects to the pupils. In terms of developing the proper skills to work through the problems, it is essential that the pupils are given as much practice time as possible to work through the questions. The more practice questions the pupils can work on the more they will develop a better understanding of the concepts and then in turn be more confident when working through the questions

Alarmed with current problem of non-mastery of some of the pupils of Osorio Elementary School in multiplication basic facts, intervention will be conducted which aims to achieve mastery through different drill cards which focus on multiplication basic facts. One of the effective ways to improve math speed accuracy is to combine math drills with a variety of computational strategies while providing constant feedback and correction where weaknesses are found.

Remediation for students with learning difficulties in Mathematics is commonly based on a behaviorist framework of learning. Generally, teachers over-emphasized the mastery of Mathematics automacy in solving arithmetic problems. Students are helped to understand mathematical concepts and procedures using a concrete-representation-abstract (CRA) sequence which is based on teacher-centered approach (Moscardini, 2009; Gurganus, 2007; Fuchs & Fuchs, 2001; Mesrcer& Miller, 1992) such as drill-and-practice, anddemonstration-prompt-practice. As a result, these students might acquire procedural knowledge but are weak in process skills and without sufficient conceptual understanding. The students might have problems applying what was learned in a variety of contexts and learning mathematics at the higher level (Moscardini, 2009;