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It’s long been known by teachers that mastering the math facts, or automaticity with the facts, is an important skill for students to acquire. So, it came as no surprise when this skill was addressed in the U.S. Department of Education’s 2008 The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel.
For all content areas, practice allows students to achieve automaticity of basic skills – the fast, accurate, and effortless processing of content information – which frees up working memory for more complex aspects of problem solving.
“General Principles of Learning,” the National Mathematics Advisory Panel
When our school began its search for a computer program to teach students basic math facts, we had several criteria in mind:
- Affordable
- Networkable
- Uncomplicated management program
- Able to meet all students’ needs
Having purchased several other programs from Essential Skills, we were excited to discover they had recently developed the math program, Mad Minute, to teach basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts.
We knew the program was affordable for our small rural school which is especially important during these tough economic times. Mad Minute is also available as a single, lab or site license. As with their other programs, it is possible to buy a single license and try the program in a classroom, then upgrade to a site license at a later time, with the cost of the single license applied toward the upgrade.
The management program is uncomplicated to understand and use. Student enrollment is easy. The teacher may go in and set up specific drill lengths and drills per session. Class and individual student reports are available to print.
Mad Minute has been a great help in teaching and reinforcing the math facts for our entire student population, from Title I and Special Ed to Gifted.
The Mad Minute program by Essential Skills has been an important and effective addition to our educational software collection.
Connie Potts
Claflin Elementary School
PO Box 287
Claflin, Kansas 67525