What Effects Does a Mathematical Fluency Program Have on the Mathematical Performance of Students With Behavioral Challenges?

This study investigated the effects of a fluency-building mathematics program called Great Leaps Math on fluency of basic addition mathematics facts zero to nine and word problem solving. The question guiding this study was: What effects does a mathematical fluency program have on the mathematical performance of students with behavioral challenges? In this study, there were three research participants whom had challenging behaviors along with mathematical difficulties.

These three participations where chosen based on the outlined criteria: they were identified by their teacher as struggling in the area of basic mathematics facts zero to nine; students were diagnosed with emotional behavioral disorder and/or ADHD and not currently receiving instruction in the area of mathematics per an individual education program (IEP); and they were two or more years below grade level in the area of mathematics identified by their teacher. (Whitney, 2016).

Based on these criteria, participant one was a nine-year-old white fourth-grade student identified with emotional and behavioral disorder, participant 2 was a 10-year-old African-American fifth-grade student diagnosed with ADHD, and participant 3 was an 11-year-old African-American fifth-grade student diagnosed with ADHD. All three students attended the same public elementary school in a large city and received special education services for behavioral support. The program/study was implemented by special education teacher, in his third year of teaching, in a resource room for all sessions. Each session was conducted during the last 30 minutes of the school day after the students received services based on their behavioral needs.

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The study focused on the issue of the need for additional research addressing instructional practices in the area of mathematics for students with disabilities. This study used the Great Leaps program. The basis of the program included a five-step process implemented by the special education teacher throughout the program. The mnemonic G-R-E-A-T stands for the following: (G) refers to greeting the student, (R) is a review of previous performance and materials, (E) is engagement in teaching, (A) is administration of a timing for one minute, and (T) is the tracking of student progress (Mercer et al., 2000).

Data from this study was collected in two forms. The first being the amount of correctly answered basic facts zero to nine in one minute. These sessions were conducted daily and lasted approximately five to seven minutes per participant. This data was collected daily by the special educator implementing the program. The second form being problem solving, which showed the time in seconds it took to complete the ten word problems and the number of correct answers. The problem-solving assessment was given before every fifth session and the data was also collected by the special educator.

The conclusion of this study revealed that each participant’s addition mathematics fluency increased as a result of the Great Leaps Math intervention, as well as their time and accuracy of solving the word problems. Therefore, this study concluded and recommended that at all grade levels teachers implementing a mathematical intervention should dedicate about 10 minutes each session to building fluent recall of basic math facts by explicitly teaching strategies for efficient counting (Whitney, 2016). This study also showed that the Great Leaps intervention amongst others are beneficial to students with and without disabilities in addressing math fact fluency skills. This study also showed an increase in math fact fluency also increases the ability for students to efficiently and accurately answer higher-order thinking problems, such as word problems.

This study supports my proposal for action research. This study further backed my thinking and reasoning behind the need for fact fluency because of the correlation between fact fluency and accuracy and efficiency of solving more complex concepts like word problems. The following statement from the article supports my assumption and need for interventions to support fact fluency, “because proficiency with basic facts is assumed after Grade three, students who continue to struggle must receive supplemental supports or interventions to meet the high academic standards of the grade-level curriculum.”

I think that my action research into this subject would find this statement true, and that many of the students in the math club are performing below grade-level in mathematics. Therefore, I will need to appropriately design a system for the club that will engage and motivate students to learn and practice their basic facts in order to see academic growth in the area of mathematics. I like how this study tracked and correlated fact fluency with accuracy and efficiency of solving word problems.

I think it would be interesting to adapt this into my AR and give a focus group of students from my math club a pre-and post- timed assessment for both fact fluency and word-problems. I think this would strengthen my action research and further show my staff the importance of fact fluency and implementing practice into our instruction daily.

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