From Speed to Understanding: A New Perspective on Math Fluency
“My son can solve multiplication problems quickly, and he is only in kindergarten!”
“The students don’t know their facts and this is slowing them down. They need more practice!”
I hear comments like this often in the profession that I am in as a mathematics specialist. Educators and parents assume that kids are solid mathematicians when they can solve problems quickly. And the reason they think this doesn’t surprise me. If you Google “math fluency” the content that comes up aligns exactly to what these educators and parents are saying (see image below). It looks as though fluency means speed and practice, practice, practice. This is also the way that many parents and teachers learned and understand math, so of course they are going to assume fluency = speed.
However, this is not the case. In order for a student to be truly fluent with their math facts, they need to be FLEXIBLE, ACCURATE & EFFICIENT. The word speed does not belong anywhere near the term fluent. The problem is that assessing a students fluency, particularly their flexibility with numbers, is not as simple as a right or wrong answer. We assess this by watching how a student works with problems. How they build, compose, decompose, connect and talk about the problems that they are solving. This takes time, the correct tasks and intentional questioning on a teacher’s part. And that is no easy feat!
So why is this still such an issue? Why have our teachers not begun to teach this way? The answer, I believe, is that higher education as well as a lack of professional learning around the topic has caused misconceptions. And the problem with these misconceptions and teachers not teaching in this way is that we are not properly building the foundation that is needed for success in mathematics throughout a child’s educational career.
How do we change this? Educate! Educate the teachers, educate the administrators and educate the parents. Once we all know and understand what fluency looks like and how we can support it, the more success we will see with our students and children as mathematicians in the future.
