Math Fact Progression of Learning x2
Math fact fluency is one of the most talked about issues in elementary math education. There is so much more to math fact fluency than ninja belts, ice cream scoops, and timed tests. There is a reason that so often kids might even “know” their facts, but it doesn’t transfer into their work in problem solving. The target with students should not be memorization, but instead the focus should be on automaticity. Students still need to be able to be flexible and see the use of math facts within context. So I’m going to talk about 2 different progressions that will bring your students to the ultimate success and application.
Progression of the Order of Facts
I have searched far and wide as a math curriculum coordinator to find the best way to teach math facts. What I am going to share has been the most clarifying explanation I have ever found. I have even done math fact groups of mixed grade level students to test out the progressions in action.
From Math Fact Fluency By Jennifer Bay-Williams and Gina Kling
From Math Fact Fluency By Jennifer Bay-Williams and Gina Kling
Students need to master their foundational facts first. If you are in Texas like me, you will see that the standards are structured to set students up for success with this research. In younger grades, students learn to skip count by 2s, 5s, and 10s. This builds up their fluency with the foundational multiplication facts. We will get more into strategies in later weeks, but I encourage you to study this progression and you can start to make sure that students who are struggling have these foundational facts down. If they don’t that will be the starting point so that they can start to use deriving strategies to find more complex facts.
2. Progression of Phases that Support Automaticity
When students are learning new math facts, they also go through 3 phases of mastery. (Research)
Phase 1: Counting (counts with objects or mentally)- includes skip counting
Phase 2: Deriving (uses reasoning strategies based on known facts)
Phase 3: Mastery (efficiently produces answers)
This is a game changer. We need to teach students that these are the phases so they can work on training their brain to derive from facts they know to get to the ones they don’t. It helps them to use their number sense and flexibility to get to their answers quickly, which once they do that enough, it will lead to mastery or memorization. Going through these stages is paramount for students to apply what they know about math facts to solving during complex problem solving. It will grow their thinking to be able to apply to larger numbers, patterns, and concepts. In later weeks, I will provide videos on teaching deriving strategies to provide even more clarity.
Come back next Tuesday to see what teaching strategies for math facts looks like. Have a great week!
