Building Prealgebra Fluency Through a Self-Managed Practice Intervention: Order of Operations
Let 6th-graders time and score their own 1-minute PEMDAS sprints to lift order-of-operations fluency fast.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Four 6th-graders practiced order-of-operations problems every school day.
Each child set a timer, did 1-minute sprints, checked answers, and graphed correct digits.
The class compared two formats: three 1-minute trials or one 3-minute trial.
What they found
All four kids solved more problems correctly after they started self-managing practice.
Three students doubled their speed; the fourth gained a smaller but clear bump.
The short 1-minute bursts worked just as well as one long 3-minute stretch.
How this fits with other research
Kong et al. (2022) also gave college students a checklist and quick feedback.
Both studies show that letting learners run their own 1-minute drills lifts scores.
Thompson et al. (1974) used older peers to tutor math. That worked too, but adults had to train and watch the tutors.
Self-managed sprints cut out the extra staffing while still raising fluency.
Why it matters
You can hand a timer, answer key, and graph to a 6th-grader and walk away. The child gains math fluency with almost no teacher time. Try it during centers or homework club tomorrow.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Behavioral fluency refers to a combination of accuracy and speed that enables students to function proficiently in the learning environment. The present study investigated the effects of a self-managed frequency-building intervention on the behavioral fluency of a critical prealgebra skill in four 6th-grade students. The intervention involved students having access to the PEMDAS (parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction) mnemonic during frequency building. Using an alternating-treatments design, the first experimental condition presented the intervention as three 1-min practice trials with 30 s of feedback delivered immediately after each frequency-building trial ended. The second condition offered one 3-min practice trial with 90 s of feedback once the trial ended. A baseline condition (no practice) had the students engage in a 1-min timed trial with no feedback. The alternating-treatments design demonstrated that three of the four students produced a superior performance within the two intervention conditions when compared to baseline. However, the results did not conclusively show that one frequency-building intervention was superior to the other.
Behavior Analysis in Practice, 2021 · doi:10.1007/s40617-020-00501-3