Conjecture

Automaticity with a skill/strategy/concept in mathematics does not imply fluency with that skill/strategy/concept.

This blog will be about exploring this conjecture and trying to come up with a working definition of mathematical fluency that is meaningful and useful for a classroom teacher, parent, or math administrator.

That being said, I’m not going to spend a lot of time upfront trying to define fluency. Instead, I want to jump into doing some math with students. That is, I will offer up a set of problems that readers of this blog can do with students and then report back in the comments section on what students did. The goal is two fold:

• Introduce problems that challenge our understanding of how students think
• Provide a common context to explore what it means for a student to be fluent

So, let’s get started!