Climbing the Ladder of Success

Successfully piloted at Taft and Las Sendas in Mesa last year, the project is working with District to introduce this new program to Elementary, Middle and High Schools.  Mr. Russ Heath, Principal at Taft, welcomes anyone to come and visit his school to observe the program. Mrs. Heidi Williams, Principal at Williams, welcomes you to contact her about how she plans to integrate this into her entire campus.

 TAFT ELEMENTARY
"Hi, I am Russ Heath, principal at Taft Elementary in the MPS system.  I have been principal at Taft for 14 years.  My sixth graders utilized this program for fifteen minutes daily.  Some students were able to complete over 300 problems in that 15 minute time frame.  I was amazed.  I have not seen a program that allows the entire class to play a game together and accomplish so much in such a short period of time.   I have tried many products that attempt to increase a student's math facts skills, but this one is the best I have seen.  It gets it done in a shorter period of time and the kids really enjoy the competition with each other.  I would highly recommend you try it out."

"Having worked with multiple math programs, the ones that I see my students making the greatest gains with are those that focus on math fluency. Practice makes permanent not perfect. Daily practice for no more than 15-20 minutes a day in the area of mathematical fluency enables students to gain a solid comfort with numbers. When students are fluent with basic mathematical computation they are able to more easily understand new math concepts because they do not have to work through the fluency issue. The comfort with numbers enables them to understand mathematical relationships and become competent mathematical thinkers." 
Rebecca Rose - La Sendas Elementary, Mesa AZ

Seeing is believing, start with a pilot with a teacher or grade and see results in less than 2 weeks.

Level 1 to 750

Similar to a video game, everyone starts at level 1 and works through the level progression.  However, students enter the game with varying backgrounds and this equates to different speeds of level progression.  Some students will race through the levels based on education experience and others will start slower, but gaps in mathematical foundation will be exposed.  This is where the magic of the program is revealed.

Imagine climbing a ladder.  Students start at the ground level with very easy steps but as they get higher the steps will gain in difficulty.  Everyone may be moving along at a steady pace at first until stumbling upon a missing or damaged rung of the ladder.  While at the base of the ladder this missing rung was not apparent or visible, but once visible it helps to account for why the student’s ladder is a bit wobbly.  It may be a 3rd grade standard or something forgotten more recently, but it still equates to a gap in the ladder.  Students take out a ‘tool kit’ and start working on repairing or building the rung until it is nice and polished, then they start climbing again.  This happens over and over as they repair and fill the gaps, building new skills and confidence.

At the high school and collegiate levels, the problem becomes apparent when we are trying to teach them higher level concepts that require a solid foundation.  Even with previous methods of repair, we thrust them into the stratosphere with a wobbly ladder. Up in the clouds, the student looks down and can only see the wobbly ladder, not the rungs that need to be repaired.  The balancing act of learning new concepts and rebuilding old creates a stressful cognitive overload which drastically reduces the students' chances of permanently retaining the new concept.  It is our experience that someone still counting on fingers is not going to easily master fractions and if something is practiced for 60 minutes without foundational understanding, it will be lost shortly afterward.

Fluintcy is a modern ‘tool kit’ that creates a more efficient work load while repairing damaged or missing concepts.  Fluintcy is all about repairing the foundation in a fun and engaging way.  No one wants to go back and do basic addition and subtraction so creating a motivating environment that has these students work on basic math facts is the key to success in their academic careers.  One student puts it the best "I can't believe I'm doing that automatically now, I never could subtract negatives.”  Now, the rungs are automatically being fixed while the student has enough mental capacity to balance the ladder.

Used as a 10-15 minute "bell work" or warm up exercise, teachers find inherent benefits because it amps up the student attention to the lesson to come.  As Mr. Strnad states, "It is very effective and fun bell work that stimulates the teenage mind as we want to capture their attention as fast as possible in a 55 min period."  Math Fluintcy at the high school level is laying the ground work for being the most efficient and effective method to build back foundations while not creating a cognitive overload that effects the retention of many students.