engaging Ways to use math fact fluency games into Tier 2 RTI math intervention

Intervention has been quite the buzz word, hasn’t it???  At least it has been in my neck of the woods.  Generally, teachers are very comfortable doing intervention in literacy, but what does good, research-based intervention look like in math?  We’ve already discussed math intervention with CGI story problems and counting interventions. So, let’s chat about using math fact fluency games as math intervention games for math fact fluency!

What is math fact fluency?

Math fact fluency is the ability to efficiently solve a math problem. The idea is that we don’t want kids using their fingers to add 6 plus 3 for the rest of their life. At some point, they need to know that math fact, or have a quick strategy for mentally solving it.

Each Friday, my first grade kids practice their math facts with fact fluency games and partner practice. They are solving math facts they should know fluently and working on explaining their thinking with their partners. This is a 20-30 minute weekly or bi-weekly routine depending on the time of year.

small group math intervention set up

Fact fluency games with partners do take a little more “overseeing” than other routines, just to make sure kids are really explaining their thinking and not just rushing through the math facts. This usually means that I only meet with one quick intervention group so that I have time to walk around the room every few minutes and give kids that accountability piece.

Most weeks my groups are my lowest babies who are still struggling to understand addition and subtraction. But, about 25% of my intervention time is for bubble kids or my highest who need some extension. (They get extensions with 2nd grade level facts in partner practice, but they still need my help extending their notation.)  So once or twice a month (fact fluency is only a weekly activity) I will pull a different group during Fact Fluency.

Now that we know what math fact fluency is and how I set up our small groups for intervention, let’s talk about some of the games and activities I use to build math fact fluency in these tier 2 math intervention groups.

Math Story Problem Practice

While every one else works on math facts, we do CGI problems to give them context and not just abstract flash cards.

This is essentially an additional day of CGI work for these strugglers. I use my anecdotal records to know who I need to pull for this. We work really hard on the difference between addition and subtraction as well as recording their thinking.

What I have found is that in small groups, several of these kiddos actually DO understand the problem and can get the right answer when you just work the problem orally with fingers or tools. The disconnect comes when they try and show their thinking on their paper. So, my math interventions center around notating their strategies.

build, break, notate

Another math fact fluency game I use to work with my math small groups for math intervention is build, break, notate. This game is part of this print and play math games resource. It’s a great game for building fluency when I’m not practicing CGI problems with this group.

Students roll 2 dice (or 3 or 2 or draw cards…whatever works to make the number ranges you need!)

Then, they draw and label the set, and find two other ways to make the same number and write a number sentence to match.  I’ve used this in small group informally and with my 1-on-1 tutoring kids.  Fact fluency games like this one are so great for building fluency and flexibility with numbers!  I also love that I can stretch my high kids by having them decompose the number into 3 parts instead of 2!