Kansas MTSS recommends ten minutes of computational fluency practice daily for all students. The recommendation is a direct relay of a What Works Clearinghouse publication under the direction of Dr. Russell Gersten and a panel of experts in Math interventions (Gersten, 2009). The recommendation as published is directly correlated to intervention time; however, research around basic arithmetic facts and automatic retrieval has shown such a strong correlation to future mathematical success that we recommend strengthening all students’ computational fluency for ten minutes each day. Thus it is recommended that the practice period be integrated into the core instruction as opposed to only during interventions.

This ten minute devotion is not meant to be rote memory practice; rather, automaticity must be built on the conceptual understanding underlying the computation at hand. This is done by addressing facts first through sufficient conceptual understanding instruction, mastery practice (goal of about 90% accuracy at a rate of about a fact per 2-3 seconds), and finally ensuring adequate spaced review to continue efficiency with each fact. For more specifics on this ten minute period, please refer to the Kansas MTSS '10 Minutes of Computational Fluency Brief in the resources below.