Taking A Look At The National Council Of Teachers Of School Mathematics

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National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) (2000) states that students in grades three through five are expected to a) develop fluency with basic number combinations for multiplication and division and use these combinations to mentally compute related problems and b) develop fluency in adding, subtracting, multiplying and diving whole numbers. Recent theories indicate that students might perform at higher levels and enjoy solving challenging math problems if they are fluent in their basic multiplication math facts (Bystrom, 2010, p. 3).
Current mathematics reform calls for changes in mathematics teaching and learning (NCTM, 2000). Although there have been numerous studies on fact fluency (e.g., Van de Walle, 2014), there has been …show more content…

Baroody (2006) describes basic fact fluency as “the efficient, appropriate, and flexible application of single-digit calculation skills and . . . an essential aspect of mathematical proficiency” (p. 22). According to Poncy, McCallum & Schmitt (2010), fluency is a term used to describe fast and accurate academic responding and is necessary to meet classroom demands across skills and subject areas (p. 917). In the NCTM, Principles and Standards for School Mathematics document, the writers refer to computational fluency as having efficient and accurate methods for computing. “Students exhibit computational fluency when they demonstrate flexibility in the computational methods they choose, understand and can explain these methods, and produce accurate answers efficiently” (NCTM, Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, 2000, p. 152.). According to Bass (2003), computational fluency entails bringing problem solving skills and understanding to computational problems (p. 325). The computational approaches a student chooses to use should be grounded in mathematical thoughts the student understands, including the construction of the base-ten number system, properties of multiplication and division, and number relations. Gojak (2012) wrote, “a student cannot be fluent without conceptual understanding and flexible thinking” (p.1). So no matter which definition you reference, fluency is flexibly solving problems efficiently and