School Skills – Math Fluency

Just like fluency in reading, fluency in math refers to how accurately and quickly you can work. I spent the first week of home school assessing my son for potential problems. We’d been told that he was weak in math fluency, but it didn’t make sense, because he could work complicated problems just fine in a reasonable amount of time.


I decided to not use the standard method of testing. A previous teacher had given him a page full of 100(!!) problems to work in a limited time. He froze almost every single time, triggering an anxiety attack. Well, duh. Who wouldn’t be overwhelmed with that? So, we spent the week working the kind of math problems he likes, and I timed him without his knowing. In his case, he loves finding the missing variable in single step equations. Give him a bunch of “10 – 5 =” problems, and he whines. Change it to “10 – 5 = x” and he’s all over it.

The point is that we checked if fluency was a problem before we started, and we did so in a way that none of his other issues were getting in the way.
 

He could quickly and accurately complete basic problems for adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. We used integers, fractions and decimals. He had already been taught how to do all those operations with positive and negative numbers, so a variety of signs were used, too. It was very clear that he knows his math facts. In fact, the only areas he struggled with were fractions and negatives. He knew how to work with them, but he had to stop and really think about it. And, that seemed to throw off his whole math groove.

Much to his complete lack of delight, most of his work now included negatives and fractions. Even if I use a premade worksheet, I’ll go through and change some of the problems.

The payoff is worth it, though. He’s much better now with not getting stuck, or even slowed down, by negative or fractions. He noticed just last week that he doesn’t have to stop and think about those things anymore. He just knows what to do!