Ms. Melanie Asaro, a 5th-grade teacher in Atascadero Unified School District in California, celebrated math fact fluency success and progress with Reflex in her classroom with a skate park-themed bulletin board. She explains, “my class is very into skateboarding, and so we designed a skate park with three tracks. They work their way along each track, Addition and Subtraction 0-10, Multiplication and Division 0-10, and Multiplication and Division 0-12. The track is broken into percentage point blocks from 10% to 100%. When they complete a track, they earn classroom cash, and are moved to the next track. When they make it to the end of all three tracks, they land in the skate park at the bottom and earn a bonus prize of items donated by a local community skate park (cool stickers, keychains, and pins).” The bulletin board was “zero prep” for Ms. Asaro “since the kids made the tracks, the skate park ‘end zone,’ and their own game pieces, which are just construction paper and push pins.”
Reflex has made a big difference for her students’ confidence and their attitude towards math. “In 5th grade, our math is time intensive because there are so many steps involved with each problem. Since using Reflex, I’ve seen students confidence in their math fact fluency go up and the time it takes them to recall or work out a math fact go down. This has made such a difference in my students, both in their view of math and in the accuracy of their work.”
One student, in particular, started the year “with so little confidence in math that when he would ask me a question, he would whisper so others wouldn’t hear what he needed help with. He’s been working through Reflex. He’s so excited to see his levels grow, and his fact family tree fill up. He asks me every couple days if I will run a new Reflex report to see his new score and loves when I tell him how many percentage points he’s gained. He moves his marker along the track and has made it through a couple tracks. He’s so proud that he’s ahead of a handful of other student in class. His confidence in math has really grown with this program.”
Ms. Asaro plans to do another Reflex bulletin board next year, but change the theme “to a place my class loves to go.”