Can they use a pencil and paper?

Method, Mental calculation, Exercises, Word problems

Elizabeth Jones avatar
Written by Elizabeth Jones
Updated over a week ago

At Smartick, we recommend trying to avoid using a pencil and paper. If children work out the exercises on paper, their agility and mental calculation will not be working in the same way. 

For example, if we have an operation like 55 + 23 and the student copies it vertically onto a piece of a paper, the whole exercise changes and the student is not working on calculation strategies. 

Of course, some exercises are more complex and in those cases a grid is presented on-screen to facilitate the solution of the problem. We recommend students utilize this option instead of physically writing out the problem on paper because transferring the answer from the paper to the screen will affect their answer time. 

However, students can use pen and paper to help them solve word problems in the more advanced levels as these exercises are more about their comprehension than response time.

Did this answer your question?