Educational Applications that address Automaticity aka Math Fact Fluency

In the last post, I discussed how to think about whether an educational application would help meet a student's IEP goals.  This post focuses on one specific type of skill - automaticity which is also called math fact fluency.  This essentially is the ability of a student to quickly, accurately and effortlessly process math content information.

Typically by 3rd grade, students are expected to have fluency with addition and subtraction; by 5th grade they are expected to have it with whole number multiplication and division.  For many students it is difficult to meet these benchmarks and particularly for those with disabilities.  Students may have trouble transferring math facts to long term memory, they may have difficulty retrieving math facts quickly, and some may never achieve complete fluency.

Therefore, technology tools (can be low to high tech) can help them compensate for the lack in automaticity.  One specific tool I found to be interesting was Timez Attack (from http://www.bigbrainz.com/).  There's a over-the-top video that describes the benefits of this game; but essentially it uses a high-tech video game environment to teach basic math fluency with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.  It certainly would be helpful for a student with fluency issues who loves to video game!  Below are a sampling of the game's graphics.



Source: Dell, A; Newton, G and Petroff, J.  (2012).  Assistive Technology in the Classroom: Enhancing the School Experience of Students with Disabilities. Pearson Education.