Required Fluencies in K-6

Arkansas Public School Resource CenterWhat is and why is math fluency important?Math fact fluency is the quick and effortless (automatic) recall of basic math facts. When students achieve automaticity with these facts, they have attained a level of mastery that enables them to retrieve them from long-term memory without conscious effort or attention.

Students have only so much working memory, and if they are using that memory to think about and solve basic facts, they dont have enough working memory left to tackle and solve higher level problems and to learn new concepts.

Knowing facts fluently frees up working memory to work on more difficult tasks.Arkansas Public School Resource Center

Mathematics Fluency: A Balanced ApproachArkansas Public School Resource Center

Required Fluencies in K-6GradeStandardRequired FluencyKK.OA.5Add/subtract within 511.OA.6Add/subtract within 1022.OA.22.NBT.5Add/subtract within 20 (know single-digit sums from memory)Add/subtract within 10033.OA.73.NBT.2Multiply/divide within 100 (know single-digit products from memory)Add/subtract within 100044.NBT.4Add/subtract within 1,000,00055.NBT.5Multi-digit multiplication66.NS.2,3Multi-digit divisionMulti-digit decimal operationsArkansas Public School Resource Center

Fluent in the particular Standards cited here means fast and accurate. It might also help to think of fluency as meaning the same thing as when we say that somebody is fluent in a foreign language: when youre fluent, you flow. Fluent isnt halting, stumbling, or reversing oneself.

The word fluency was used judiciously in the Standards to mark the endpoints of progressions of learning that begin with solid underpinnings and then pass upward through stages of growing maturity.

Some of these fluency expectations are meant to be mental and others with pencil and paper. But for each of them, there should be no hesitation in getting the answer with accuracy.

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Fluency is NOT:

1.2.3.4.5.

Ifthen,Arkansas Public School Resource CenterAsk participants to share what fluency is NOTEX: just timed tests, rote memorization, etc.7

Quick Images

Quick Images can help students to develop understanding of quantity. Being able to conceptualize a number in a variety of ways will help students to use numbers flexibly, which is an important facet of number sense.

The teacher briefly shows an image of a quantity (dot images and ten frames are often used). Showing the image for only a brief amount of time encourages students to subitize and discourages counting by ones.

Students are asked to identify the quantity they saw and to describe the image. How many did you see? How did you see it? How did you know it was four?

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Try out some of these sites!Paid, but excellent!Arkansas Public School Resource Center

What materials do you already have available to you?

What do you need?

What can you find for free via Open Educational Resources (OER)?

How will you systematically incorporate fluency practice?

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