Super Speed Math Day One

After watching the webcast on Super Speed Math, I was excited to try it with my class.  Over the years I have been frustrated about the poor results I have seen from teaching math facts.  When my students leave my class to move on to fourth grade I know that a large number of them have not mastered their multiplication facts.  This gives them a great disadvantage when moving up to the next grade.  I knew that what I was doing was not effective, but didn't know what else to do. 

On Wednesday, I told my class that I had learned a new math game and that I was excited to teach it to them.  I explained that I was going to teach them the game on Friday. During the last hour today (Friday) I announced that it was finally time to learn the new game, Super Speed Math.  The room buzzed with excitement.

After explaining the rules to the game and writing them on the board, I said, "Ready, Set, Go!" and started the timer.  You could hear 16 children reciting their multiplication facts as quickly as they could.  None of them were yelling or off task.  You could tell they were fully engaged.  The other half of the class stared intently at the answer key (even though the answer to almost every problem in the first 2 rows was 0.) 

The students really seemed to enjoy the game.  They especially liked being able to cross off the first row when they broke their own record.  When I explained that the shaded boxes were the gnarlies the class was grateful that they were near the bottom.  I also got them excited when I explained that once they passed level one, level 2 was in random order with the gnarlies near the top!

Overall, the game went smoothly, but there were a few things that can be improved next time.  I had one group arguing over whether a student broke her own record or not.  I tried to explain that it was suppose to be a fun game, and that they shouldn't argue, but I will have to come up with a better remedy for the next time.  I also had an odd number of students, so I had to partner up with the extra student.  This made it very difficult to monitor the class the way I would have liked, especially the first time we did something new.