This year our new principal created and introduced a school-wide fact fluency program that focuses on   fluency and flexibility in thinking about numbers and the equal sign in all four operations.  Going through the program, students are required to solve for missing addends and parts (or the whole) of an equation in all positions by understanding part-part-whole relationships . The first few stages involve addition and subtraction beginning with fluency of facts within 10.   Here's a fact fluency freebie for your firsties (woahhhhhh alliteration overload!) that can help support understanding of the equal sign and finding the missing number in subtraction equations with zero.  Cut out the pieces and have your friends match the missing number with the equation it belongs to.  Enjoy! Click on the picture to download from Google Drive. I also came across this post from Teaching in Progress about word problems.  She posted a great visual and freebie that has helped me ...