Building a strong foundation in fact fluency through conceptual learning to foster automaticity is something we’re always searching for as educators. Our students need daily hands-on practice opportunities other than just rote-memorization.
Not only that, but students should be able to solidify and apply their understanding of math facts to real-world problems. After all, we’re collectively teaching our next-gen leaders—and extending critical thinking to develop readiness for future learning is not an option, rather, it’s a must.
Consider the 5 building blocks to develop greater math fluency, boost students’ mathematical thinking, and build proficiency in your schools and classrooms alike.
- Fact Builder: Activities to build facts should be purposeful, while also aligning with the new concepts being taught within the grade. When students are beginning to learn math content in their new grade level, we need to apply strategies that encourage fluency and are For example, the concept of operations will need to be developed by using manipulatives and visual models.
- Fact Strategy Practice: Can your students analyze problems and apply multiple problem-solving strategies? Consider teaching students how to count on and doubling up are two strategies that some students may need to see in action before doing it themselves. Practice opportunities conducive to this strategy help students make sense of problems and apply the strategy to solve them.
- Apply & Build Knowledge: Next, we’ll need to ask students to synthesize and apply their knowledge or fact strategies to real-world problems. Practice opportunities for students should be varied–not only to make sense of problems, but also to identify and apply which strategies to use to solve them. High-quality practice opportunities further build mathematical understanding by developing relationships and connections between numbers and operations.
- Writing About Math: Encouraging students to evaluate their own thinking and make deeper connections happen when they write in math. For example, writing their explanation and/or justifying their answer promotes higher levels of cognition. Students are able to evaluate and create through movement, drawing, writing, or talking.
- Challenge Practice: Challenge-type questions help students extend their thinking and prepare them for future learning. As the final building block of Fluency, students can now move beyond basic facts to using the same connections, reasoning and strategies with larger whole numbers, fractions, and decimals where grade-appropriate.
The 5 building blocks of fact fluency focuses on conceptual understanding and building fluency, while also helping students gain a balanced practice at their grade levels.
To get started with Fact Fluency in your classroom, here are some samples of practice opportunities.
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