Building Math Fluency in Middle School

No matter what the grade level, the one common issue I hear from math teachers is kids' lack of fluency. When students lack math fluency, it makes every concept more difficult, and it hurts their confidence. While most teachers see fluency as a problem, many teachers aren’t sure what to do to solve this problem in middle school or later. I’m going to share some resources and solutions that will help your students build math fluency.

What is math fluency?

Being fluent in math involves efficiency, accuracy, and flexibility. Students must understand several strategies for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. When they have several strategies, they can choose the one that makes the most sense and is the most efficient for the problem they are given. Having fluency means understanding number relationships and using reasoning to solve problems. NCTM has a detailed definition you can read more about here.

I like to say in simple terms that when you are fluent in math, numbers are your friends (and you can have fun with them)!

We know math fluency affects student confidence and EVERY concept we teach, but here's what we often get wrong about fluency…

❌ We can just practice math facts to build fluency.

Math facts get a lot of attention when it comes to fluency. However, when we focus on memorizing math facts without meaning, we aren’t really building fluency. Instead, our time would be better spent showing and discussing different strategies for mental math. The more time students get to see strategies, try strategies, and choose strategies, the more fluent they become.

❌ Fluency is mainly about speed.

Speed is too often the focus in math class. We don’t need students to do math fast; we need them to do math well. Efficiency is a part of fluency, but it isn’t the only part. Often speed is the easiest thing to measure, so drills become a way to “measure fluency.” However, using timed tests to measure fluency is flawed. Being fast doesn’t necessarily mean a student understands the methods they are using. A timed test won’t give us information about flexibility or if students will be able to transfer what they know to other types of numbers. Additionally, when we consider math anxiety, speed drills are not giving us a full picture of students’ abilities.

❌ Sometimes it's too late to build fluency.

We can see how many of the elementary math standards relate to teaching fluency, but as students move up in grade level, fluency seems to be taken for granted. Therefore, middle and high school classrooms do not always devote much (if any) time to developing fluency (due to district directives and curriculum guidelines). If we don’t spend any time on fluency, we can’t expect fluency to grow. Fluency can be built at any age. Fluency grows when students get opportunities to understand different strategies and work with them. That experience can happen at any grade level. (I've seen high school students build their fluency… and their confidence!)

Math Fluency Resources:

Strategy Charts

For so many teachers (including myself), we didn’t learn multiple strategies when we were in school. I was in complete shock when I saw how many different ways I could think about multiplication. I love digging into why the strategies work. The better we understand the strategies, the better we can help our students learn them. I have charts of my favorite mental math strategies to build fluency. I include explanations and examples. Get them right to your inbox below.

Mental Math Video

Teaching mental math strategies is my favorite way to build fluency with middle and high schoolers. In this video, I show strategies I love to show at the beginning of the year that really “WOW” students and help with buy-in.

In the video, you’ll also see how important visuals are! They help show why the strategies work and that the strategies make sense. These may seem like tricks, but they aren’t. They make sense when we see how they work.

Books

Two books have really shaped my understanding of fluency and how to teach it.

Figuring Out Fluency in Mathematics Teaching and Learning by by Jennifer M. Bay-Williams and John J. SanGiovanni is great for helping teachers understand what fluency is and why it’s critical. It tackles many of the misunderstandings about fluency. This book also provides lots of activity suggestions that you can do with your students to work on fluency. I would recommend this one especially to elementary teachers, but really to any math teacher.

Making Number Talks Matter by Cathy Humphreys and Ruth Parker is the book that helped me learn all the strategies I wished I had learned in school. It is geared toward 3rd-10th grade teachers. It helped me plan meaningful Number Talks lessons for my middle schoolers.

Strategy Reference Posters

A wall of reference posters showing different strategies is a great way to reinforce the strategies we teach students. I created 14 posters with common mental math strategies. Each poster gives a strategy, an explanation, a visual, and an example. These make a useful classroom decoration to have displayed all year.

You can find these posters here.

Number Talks Lessons:

Number Talks routines are one of the most powerful ways I have seen to build fluency with any age group. During Number Talks, a problem is given, students compute mentally, and then they share their strategies. The teacher can help reinforce the strategies by drawing visuals to support their explanations.

When I first tried Number Talks with middle schoolers, I realized many of my students only knew standard algorithms. They tried to “borrow” and “carry” in their heads, which often led to mistakes. They didn’t realize that the standard algorithm usually wasn’t the most efficient method to solve a problem. They also didn’t have the confidence to try many problems mentally. Once I began showing them different strategies and why they worked, they began to think more flexibly. They began sharing different strategies, and they were excited about it!

I created a full year Number Talks lessons to help more math teachers implement a routine. These lessons are meant for 5th grade and up. They are no-prep PowerPoints and only take about 5 minutes a day. Each week, students learn a new strategy with animated visuals, and then they get to practice and share their own strategies. The lessons begin with whole numbers and then eventually extend to fractions and decimals. I am thrilled that so many teachers have found success with these lessons and have SEEN the fluency and confidence grow in their students.

See the full year of Number Talks lessons here.