Math Fluency Practice
We have found that calculation skills of university students have declined significantly. Relative to students educated in the 1980’s, students who were educated in the 1990’s had arithmetic fluency scores that were lower by 20% (A Calculated Risk: Is Arithmetic Skill declining in Canada?).
The challenge in this decline is that development of higher-order math skills is more difficult, if the basic facts aren’t memorized. If a child has to compute the answers to basic facts, less of that child ’s thinking capacity can be devoted to higher level concepts than a student who can effortlessly recall the answers to basic facts.
We recommend practicing math facts with your children in game or time-challenge formats.
The Jump workbooks described above provide practice sheets and reinforcement methods using the fingers.
For the younger child, MathBrain promotes fluency with fun speed games.
For older children, SmartKiddies MasterClass pops up a random sequence of multiplication facts, and displays the time to complete. The Year levels are equivalent to grades – click on a Year level at the top, and it takes you to all the options for that year. Have your child say the answer out loud before they type it in.
http://www.smartkiddies.com/members/skillBuilders/skillBuilderMenu.htm
The number challenge part of the site is fun too (you can pick a particular character to play against, and then try and beat him/her). Remind your child to press Enter after they type in the answer.
http://www.smartkiddies.com/members/challenge/numberChallenge.htm
