Unlock the mystery of math fact fluency with the enlightening guidance of Laurie Penney, a Math Content and Pedagogy Specialist from Curriculum Associates. In our latest conversation, Laurie sheds light on the vital components of math fluency—accuracy, efficiency, and flexibility—and how these elements intersect to build a robust foundation for learners. She offers a fresh perspective on memorization, drawing parallels to the ease of learning the lyrics to a beloved song, a natural and stress-free process. Our discussion also veers away from the anxiety-ridden timed tests, steering towards innovative strategies that encourage a more positive and engaging way to grasp critical math facts.
As we bring this episode to a close, we extend a warm invitation to our fellow educators to join the conversation beyond the podcast. Connect with us on Twitter and Instagram, or reach out via email to share your thoughts, suggest discussion themes, or express your interest in contributing as a guest. By subscribing and leaving a review, you help support our community and continue the mission of empowering passionate educators. So, let's keep the dialogue going, and stay tuned for future episodes that promise to shine a spotlight on the incredible journey of teaching and leadership.
Read Laurie's Blog: CurriculumAssociates.com/blog/make-math-fun
Follow us on Twitter: @CurriculumAssoc
Follow us on Instagram: @MyiReady
Have feedback, questions, or want to be a guest? Email ExtraordinaryEducators@cainc.com to connect with us!
Unlock the mystery of math fact fluency with the enlightening guidance of Laurie Penney, a Math Content and Pedagogy Specialist from Curriculum Associates. In our latest conversation, Laurie sheds light on the vital components of math fluency—accuracy, efficiency, and flexibility—and how these elements intersect to build a robust foundation for learners. She offers a fresh perspective on memorization, drawing parallels to the ease of learning the lyrics to a beloved song, a natural and stress-free process. Our discussion also veers away from the anxiety-ridden timed tests, steering towards innovative strategies that encourage a more positive and engaging way to grasp critical math facts.
As we bring this episode to a close, we extend a warm invitation to our fellow educators to join the conversation beyond the podcast. Connect with us on Twitter and Instagram, or reach out via email to share your thoughts, suggest discussion themes, or express your interest in contributing as a guest. By subscribing and leaving a review, you help support our community and continue the mission of empowering passionate educators. So, let's keep the dialogue going, and stay tuned for future episodes that promise to shine a spotlight on the incredible journey of teaching and leadership.
Read Laurie's Blog: CurriculumAssociates.com/blog/make-math-fun
Follow us on Twitter: @CurriculumAssoc
Follow us on Instagram: @MyiReady
Have feedback, questions, or want to be a guest? Email ExtraordinaryEducators@cainc.com to connect with us!
Curriculum Associates presents the Extraordinary Educators podcast, with host Danielle Sullivan and Sarah Loveris here tips, best practices and successes to improve your teaching and leadership and drive student growth and learning. We're here for you. Hi everyone, welcome back to the Extraordinary Educators podcast. It is Sarah, and this week I am joined by Lori Penny, who is the content and pedigati specialist for Math at CA. Lori talks a lot about fluency in this episode, and I am really really excited whether you're a math teacher or not, because I think at some point in our teaching careers we all kind of cross the bridge of fluency in one way or another with whatever content we teach and really thinking about what are our expectations for kids being quote unquote fluent in their math facts or whatever else it is, and how can we get them there in a way that's not stressful and anxiety provoking, and so I really hope you enjoy my conversation with Lori here.
Speaker 1:It is Welcome, lori. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me, of course. So, just to get started, what's on your mind lately? What have you been working on?
Speaker 2:Well, I've been thinking a lot about fact fluency and how teachers often find it's an area that they struggle with all in all the elementary grades and all the operations, really thinking about how students develop fact fluency, what that even means and what the best ways to approach it is with their students?
Speaker 1:Yes, and as a former elementary and math middle school teacher, I get that it totally resonates with me. So just so we start off on the same page here how do you define fluency in math?
Speaker 2:So for me, fluency is a combination of accuracy and efficiency and flexibility with math facts. Of course we want students to be accurate, efficient and flexible with all the mathematics they do, but we know it's really important for students to have a good foundation with those basic facts and that's often what elementary school teachers are focusing on.
Speaker 1:And before we hit record, you were kind of talking about your interest recently and understanding how the student brain works and how they come to be fluent, so I'd love for you to just speak about that a bit for our listeners, yeah sure you know it hits home for me in a million ways.
Speaker 2:When I was a child many, many years ago, the way fact fluency happened in schools was here's a bunch of index cards with the facts on them. Go home and memorize them, drill and drill and drill until you can come in and do them and I'm going to quiz you with a speed test every Friday and there's going to be a star on by your name on a giant chart for everyone to see who's succeeding and who's not succeeding. That was normal and you know, if you were pretty good with your facts probably felt pretty good, but I imagine it caused a lot of stress and anxiety and tears for people for many years. And I remember you know my mom drilling me as she made dinner at night. You know what's six and eight and I'm seven, over and over until we just got it in the car everywhere. And some of that still exists.
Speaker 2:There are still districts that require assessing math facts. There are still teachers that want to do time tests, but we definitely think about those things differently now and what I'm really interested in is thinking about how students memorize things and what the process is around that. When I think about that I want to pull back and think about anything that we need to memorize, like we all have to memorize things. So, sarah, can you think about something that you've had to memorize or that you have memorized and maybe you haven't really thought about?
Speaker 1:Sure, like your home address right. Something like that, or a phone number of a friend or a loved one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great. So those are things that when they came up, if you moved houses, you spent some time and you spent the time to memorize it. Think about something like a song that you know all the words to. Did you sit down and wear the piece of paper and memorize it?
Speaker 1:No, of course not. It just happens naturally over time.
Speaker 2:It exactly happens naturally over time. All of a sudden you're like holy cow, I know every word to that song and let me tell you, 20 years from now you're going to go, I still know every word to that song, even if you haven't heard that song in 10 years. And I think our memories are something that we want to just sort of tap into when we think about, naturally, things that we memorized like that, that we didn't have to work at. And how can that help us think about how we can help students memorize what six times eight is, because memorization like that rote memorization happens gradually over time. Like it or not, you keep hearing that song. The words start to just be part of what you know.
Speaker 1:So that's such a nice song. Sorry to pause you for a second there. I just want to kind of reiterate that because it's such a different mindset and when I think about what you experienced in school I did too, and I literally get like a pit in my stomach. I have like a physical reaction to the stress and anxiety about like, and I knew my facts, so it's still stressful for me. Right, you had to write it fast in your pencil and are you going to go with this like up and down or across? I'm not going to get it done by the 60 seconds and the way you just described it memorizing something like I think of a song I like and how I know all the words is it's really enjoyable and it elicits positive feelings. And if we can instill that in our students versus the stressful anxiety piece like, what a difference that would make to their journey and math right.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And let me tell you, I was a student who the facts came easily to, but I still stressed out about the kid next to me who was anxious. I was anxious for them and with them, so the anxiety was just high. So one thing that sort of flows from this for me is the idea of not worrying about the facts from the beginning and I was describing that it used to be this is our threes week. Everyone take those index cards home and by Friday you'll know your threes. Instead, not thinking about assessing it all for a long time, like just being involved in exploration around the facts, is just a natural part of what we do. Like we turn on the radio and that song just keeps playing and playing.
Speaker 2:When my children were little, they took piano lessons and they practiced the same song week after week after week and then at some point their piano teacher would say okay, for next week, I'd like you to have this piece memorized that puts up all these red flags. Oh my God, how am I going to do that? How am I going to do that? But what actually happened is they found that if they tried it, just try it, try to play it. They've realized they've been playing it all these weeks and they just started to absorb into them like the lyrics of that song. They knew way more than they thought there may be just be a measure or two that they have to check in on, and that's the way we should be considering math facts too. Let's do games and activities and explorations where the facts are all around us. And then when I say, hey, do you know three times three, you may realize you just know it. You've done it so many times, you just know it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's just a nice pleasant experience to get to that time when you actually do know it. Laurie wrote a great blog for our listeners. We'll link it in the show notes. That has actual games and things you can do in the classroom. A bunch of ideas. But thinking about those, Laurie, or different ones, what is your favorite or one of the most recommended or one you see most joined students of ways that teachers rather than doing? Here are the flashcards that they can create this experience for their students.
Speaker 2:Well, there's a wide variety depending on where your students are. Some kids love a fast pace and a competitive and a speed game, but we don't want to recommend that for students until they know their facts. Once they know their facts and they're just maybe one or two that trip them up and they're in that mode of. I got these I'm going to show off to my best friend. Which one of us knows it faster than those are enjoyable but, as you can imagine, those can be super stressful for the student who doesn't know them is just learning them, and so for the just learning them, you want to play games that allow students the time to figure the fact and not have to know it off the tip of their tongue. So there's definitely different levels of playing around with those.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's important to consider what you just said, the goal right. The outcome is not write them as fast as you can, it's play the game or whatever the task is, which then helps, kind of naturally, bring the facts to memory.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think the last thing that I want to make sure we really touch on is what are our goals? Like you, just you know I'm talking about goals. We talk about speed and there's something to be said for speed, but really why, like, how fast is fast? Because is it? You need to be able to answer every one of these in two and a half seconds or three seconds, which is sometimes what parameters people put on.
Speaker 2:I used to say to my students you know, nowhere in your life as an adult is someone going to tap you on the shoulder and say, can you tell me what six times eight is in the next two seconds? It's not how the world works, very true, but we do want some of them to be, you know, very quick wrote memory and also just an expectation about what fluency means in terms of numbers. Like, is it okay that there's five or six facts that I struggle with? Because I don't know any adults who can't honestly say, yep, you know, nine times seven. I still have to pause and think about that. That's one for me, nine times seven. But that's okay, I can take a little more time to figure that out and just work with the ones. I know None of this I don't have all of them perfectly is going to make me a failure in math or in life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's great, and it's also great to have your students, like you said, or showing your vulnerability as a teacher. Right, I still same with me. I mean mostly for the nines. I have the trick in my head like seven minus one is six. What plus six is nine? 63, right, but it takes more than the one second that you said.
Speaker 2:So that's okay. When you need nine times seven, you know how to get it. There's a way for you to understand it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. Well, that is all the time we have for it today, laurie. Thank you so much for joining. I'm sure our listeners are going to love hearing all of your insights and tips for them, inspired by following us on social media, and please tag us in your posts on Twitter, at curriculumassoch, and on Instagram, at myirety. If you have feedback about the podcast, a topic of interest or want to be a guest, email extraordinaryeducatorsatcainccom. Subscribe where you listen to podcasts, and if you'd like to help more educators like you join the conversation, please leave a review.
Speaker 3:And remember, be you be true, be extraordinary. The Extraordinary Educators podcast is produced by Curriculum Associates. Editing by Whiteboard Geeks, social media by Atstie Hannan, guest booking by Sarri Laveris, production by Hailey Browning. This podcast is copyright, material and intellectual property of Curriculum Associates.