Computational Fluency

Number Fact Fluency:

Much emphasis is placed on quick retrieval of addition, subtraction, and times tables number facts in early elementary education. All children need to work hard to memorize these facts, however, there is a difference between brains who haven’t been given the opportunity and practice to memorize them and brains who have tried, and tried, and tried and still struggle to recall the facts when needed.

While this program supports all children, it is aimed at those who demonstrate a struggle with math facts and after many failures potentially have developed anxiety that causes their brains to ‘freeze up’ when asked to perform ‘mental math’.

Do we have the magic solution?

If there was a ‘magic’ solution, wouldn’t we all already be using it!?

Unfortunately, there is no ‘quick fix’ or ‘magic solution’. Here’s a snapshot of our approach.

• We start with foundations, teaching children through subitizing and the CRA approach are the core of our program. While we are working on other parts of the Notch Hill Math program, we are quietly working to change the way your child ‘sees’ numbers.
• We practice alternative strategies to solving mental arithmetic problems, this helps with the anxiety.
• We use a systematic and explicit approach.
• We work at the level that your child needs, allowing him/her to reach mastery before adding complexity.
• We teach concepts using restricted number facts to support fluency.
• We don’t use ‘quick tricks’ but we do use strategies that are grounded in our program that do aid memorisation.
• We use music and games to aid learning.

This program does a lot to support math fact fluency skills. However, at the end of the day, a person’s ability in math is not predicated on their ability to memorize math facts. Einstein, Nikola Tesla & Thomas Edison are famous examples of people who struggled with ‘basic math’ but went on to be successful in math and engineering.

We are happy to provide our Virtual Mentoring families with advice and recommendations for IEP meetings and teacher conferences so that another generation of future mathematicians grows up to see their true potential in the subject.