Wanted to share a video of a presentation to a public school board in Northern California about ‘Math Fact Fluency’ given by a friend and colleague:
The main presenter — David Margulies — is a parent and former IBM Ph.D research staff member who worked in materials science his entire career and has co-authored 34 patents. He was volunteering in his child’s public school several days a week during math instruction time and noticed the severe lack of basic numeracy among the students in his child’s class. As context, the district where his son’s school is located is a rural, low-SES, “low performing” district — only ~9% of 11th graders meet or exceed CA state standards in math.
David was not content to let what he observed in his classroom volunteer time continue on unaddressed. So he worked with district staff to closely analyze math performance, identified poor math fact fluency as the key problem plaguing students, and set about to try to help the district resolve the observed problems. The video is David’s presentation to his school board on the results of his findings. He also suggested using Brian Poncy’s Facts on Fire program to improve math fact fluency in the lower elementary grades.
David told me that the Anne Stokke podcast series, especially the interview with Brian Poncy, as well as podcast episodes with Amanda VanDerHeyden, Robin Codding, and others, informed this effort.
It’s an enlightening and inspirational presentation. Shows what can happen when motivated parents work together with dedicated school staff to try to improve math instructional practices.
