Daily Fact Assessments

This week, students are bringing home their first "speedway" assessment page.  They will also bring home their second test of a weekly five minute timed test--subtraction.  You might wonder, how do we do and use these assessments in our classroom?

The upper Montessori students do daily, quick math fact assessments. We do a one minute "speedway" assessment four days per week and a weekly five-minute timed test. This plan was originally developed based on a plea from WO middle and high school math teachers to make sure that students knew their facts.  However, I've continued this work because the carryover to greater overall math confidence is huge!

Our math speedway is a three or four day per week one-minute test with 10 problems. It covers basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.  This year I'm planning to add fraction reducing as a 5th section of the speedway.  Ideally, students move forward each time they take their speedway test.

The five minute timed test requires students to move through 100 basic math facts with 100% accuracy. Students do addition and subtraction in the beginning of the year each year as a baseline assessment but the main focus is multiplication and division. For those students that pass out of division we have other five-minute challenges! Students compete against their own score each week.

The overall goal is steady progress in memorizing all facts. These assessments can be fun and the students look forward to them (That is also why everyone starts at zero for the addition speedway.) Most importantly, they take very little time each week out of the school day but the results are seen in our daily math lessons as well as simple fact recall.

What do these assessments tell you at home?  They are a snapshot of what math facts students have mastered and where they struggle.  If your son or daughter did well on this week's subtraction five-minute test, that is great!  Next week we'll be doing a multiplication five-minute assessment.  Watch for these to come home to see how students are doing on their facts.  Also, look for speedways that are 100% correct.  When a speedway test comes home with errors, this is a fact family to study and practice at home.