Eight Unproductive Practices in Developing Fact Fluency

Basic fact fluency has always been of interest to elementary school teachers and is particularly relevant because a wide variety of supplementary materials of varying quality exist for this topic. This article unpacks eight common unproductive practices with basic facts instruction and assessment.

Lessons Learned From a Rural Classroom Study: Transitioning From Concrete to Virtual Manipulatives to Teach Math Fact Fluency to Students With Learning Disabilities

As the use of technology has become more prevalent within the educational environment over the past decade, the emergence of the use of virtual manipulatives to support student learning in math has made transitioning to technology-infused math instruction unavoidable. Students in rural areas, however, have tended to receive far less technology-infused instruction due to the many challenges faced by rural schools that can adversely affect academic opportunities and disrupt equity in learning and teaching. In the current paper, we report on a classroom study conducted to examine whether the previously proven effects of concrete manipulatives can carry over into those of virtual manipulatives when teaching math fact fluency in multiplication and explored the potential for virtual manipulatives in rural classrooms from the teacher’s perspective. Quantitative and qualitative results both indicated a promising potential for usage of virtual manipulatives, with meaningful implications for practitioners. The educational implications for designing and planning effective instruction incorporating virtual manipulatives are discussed.

Asked & Answered

The Asked & Answered department shares excerpts from discussion threads on the online MyNCTM community. In this issue, featured threads highlight responses to members' questions related to fact fluency and art-math integration in elementary school, number talks with middle school students, and classroom-tested contexts for introducing students to systems of equations.