Rationale
As a fourth grade team, our annual team goal was to focus on and improve math fact fluency. Every month, the fourth graders are given two 5-minute tests one for multiplication, and one for division. Our goal was to have all students at 80% correct on both tests. Our students' scores weren't improving at a rate that we were comfortable with. In February, my scores were as follows:
Multiplication:
Division:
As a class, going from 91.30% to 60.87% and 34.78% below in both multiplication and division was an improvement, however, it seemed that there could be more done to help the students increase their fluency. As I taught, I was also seeing that knowledge of math facts was crucial for success in fourth grade math lessons. There was no time for doing facts on a paper, referencing a multiplication chart, or counting on fingers. The students were expected to know facts immediately for their new, current lessons. After reviewing data from the three fourth grade classrooms, I averaged each student's January multiplication and division test score and ranked each student in order from highest to lowest averaged scores. Out of the 66 students, I contacted the bottom ten students' parents to ask if their child could be involved in a before school math club to increase math fact fluency. I stressed the importance of math fact fluency in their child's math education currently and how it would affect them in the future. Out of the ten students, one family declined. I then contacted the 11th student and her parents accepted.
Starting the first week of February 2015, I had a group of ten students who needed to increase their math fact fluency in both multiplication and divison. The math club would meet Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings for ten weeks. I chose to make the group a before school club because I wanted to make it a priority. Our days were already packed with the curriculum and I felt that it wouldn't be as beneficial being squeezed into the day here and there. I wanted to make sure each student had 30 minutes of undistracted time where they felt comfortable and able to challenge themselves in learning more facts. Also, since the students were from all three rooms, it was much easier to get them all together outside of the school day. The students were hesitant to start the group at first, but it became fun through the games and having each other to learn. The club was thirty minutes long, and the students completed XtraMath and Fastt Math on the computer, and Rocketmath on paper. After a month, the results were evident and I could see that these programs that were implemented were helping these students. Along with my excitement, I loved seeing how my students were seeing their improvement and feeling more confident in their knowledge of math facts.
Our math fact group met for ten weeks, four times a week. Data was collected every day through Rocketmath 1-minute timed tests and the FASTT Math and XtraMath programs online. Once a week, the students were given a 2-minute timed test of multiplication facts. Once a month, the students were given a 5-minute multiplication and division test to compare with their results since September. Overall, every week I had 5 different collections of data to monitor the students' progress.
