Mathematics

3 Takeaways About Math Fact Fluency

By Sarah Schwartz — May 31, 2023 3 min read
Student teacher Sara Neal teaches math at Whitehall Elementary School, Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2023, in Bowie, Md.
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Figuring out a word problem. Calculating area and perimeter. Finding the measure of an unknown angle.

All these tasks, and more, draw on an essential foundation of math knowledge, said Brian Bushart, a 4th grade teacher in West Irondequoit Schools in New York: fluency with math facts.

“Everything else we do in math relies on your ability to use that knowledge pretty quickly,” he said.

Bushart was speaking on an Education Week panel on May 25, focused on two important pieces of early math instruction: fact fluency and beginning word problem-solving.

Having a strong grasp on fact fluency—such as single-digit arithmetic, and multiplication tables—frees up mental space for students to solve more advanced, multistep problems, said Nicole McNeil, a professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame, and another speaker in the panel.

“If we are spending all of our time ‘counting on’ to solve a pretty basic arithmetic fact, we’re not going to have resources available to do those higher-order problem-solving tasks,” she said.

Here are three takeaways from the panel about how teachers can help students develop fact fluency. To read more about this topic, or others in early math education, see Education Week’s new report, Math Foundations for All.

Learning math facts is a ‘multi-year progression’

The end goal of math fact practice is for students to be able to recall them “automatically,” or calculate them “within a second or two,” said McNeil.

But students work up to that goal, said Bushart: “There’s a multi-year progression of learning.”

In kindergarten, students learn how to do basic work with numbers—how to count, for instance. Then, teachers introduce the idea that it’s possible to join and separate numbers.

From there, students learn strategies for joining and separating numbers in a more efficient way. For instance, Bushart said, students can use their knowledge of adding by 10 to make adding by 9 easier—pulling 1 from the other number to transform the problem into one where students are adding by 10, so that 9 + 6 is transformed into 10 + 5.

Then, quickly recalling these facts becomes the goal. Bushart tells his students: “The reason we’re doing it is that practice of remembering is actually what’s going to strengthen your memory over time.”

Math facts should be taught as part of an ‘interconnected network’

Automaticity with math facts is important, but students should understand the why behind them too, Bushart said.

He talked about teaching students who could solve 8 x 5 quickly, but didn’t know what 8 x 6 was. Part of his goal is to help students see these two equations as related.

See Also

Illustration of a giant red addition symbol on a field of numbers
Vanessa Solis/Education Week via Canva

“I want kids to start to notice that … 8 x 5 is almost 8 x 6, which is almost 8 x 7. That’s the kind of space I want them to be in,” he said.

This is one reason why calculators can’t replace prowess with math facts, said McNeil—if kids are relying on calculators, they’re not developing this relational knowledge. “When students are fluent in math facts, it becomes part of an interconnected network,” she said.

Avoid ‘bombarding’ children with failure when they practice

Bushart only assesses his students on math fact recall once a week or once every other week. He also intersperses facts that students already can recall easily with ones that they’re trying to memorize.

“You don’t want to bombard them with, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” he said. “You want a lot of success in there.”

McNeil endorsed this strategy. “Children are only developing automaticity with a few facts at a time,” she said. “Do not practice all of the facts at one time.”

She offered another suggestion: It’s important that students have strategies, like making 10, to compute the facts that they can use if they can’t recall the answer automatically. These strategies can act as a back-up, she said, so that kids can still solve for the answer.

Watch the entire panel below.

Related Tags:

Events

English-Language Learners Webinar AI and English Learners: What Teachers Need to Know
Explore the role of AI in multilingual education and its potential limitations.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Mathematics Webinar
Pave the Path to Excellence in Math
Empower your students' math journey with Sue O'Connell, author of “Math in Practice” and “Navigating Numeracy.”
Content provided by hand2mind
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Recruitment & Retention Webinar
Combatting Teacher Shortages: Strategies for Classroom Balance and Learning Success
Learn from leaders in education as they share insights and strategies to support teachers and students.
Content provided by DreamBox Learning

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Mathematics Making Sense of Fractions: This Tactic Helped Students Grasp a Key Math Topic
Fractions are an important building block in students’ mathematical foundations—and notoriously difficult to master.
3 min read
teenager child student thinks over solves example problem with fractions on blackboard in school classroom in math algebra lesson
Natalia Bodrova/iStock
Mathematics Opinion Get Kids Moving During Math Lessons. Trust Me, It Helps Them Learn
Physical activity can be more than a “brain break.” Here’s how to use movement integration as an instructional tool in math class.
Kendall Stallings
5 min read
Illustration: Little girl plays hopscotch jumping on numbered squares drawn on ground
Mikhail Seleznev/iStock + Education Week
Mathematics Q&A With Data Science in Demand, This State Is Infusing Instruction With It
Virginia has created a high school data science class and updated math standards to include more data analysis lessons.
4 min read
Teacher giving a lecture in a data classroom to a group of students
E+/Getty
Mathematics Students Need Better/More Data-Science Skills. Here Are 5 Ways Schools Can Help
Over the past decade, students’ basic data-science skills have been in decline.
6 min read
Photo of students creating charts on computers.
iStock / Getty Images Plus