There are many ways to teach fact fluency, but we must not be too quick to memorize! There are three steps on the road to fact fluency: 1) conceptual understanding, 2) development of strategies, and then 3) memorization!
If we start at the memorization stage of fact fluency before having steps 1 and 2 in place, we have a weak foundation that will surely crumble. We continue to hear teachers say "kids don't know their multiplication facts!", but I venture to ask - "do they know their addition facts?" Learning addition facts is foundation to learning multiplication facts!
Building Math Confidence video link
Fact Fluency for Addition and Subtraction - Website
Fact Fluency for Multiplication
Fact Fluency Blog
Think Math - resources for fluency
You Cubed at Stanford University - with Jo Boaler
What strategies help math facts stick besides the old "drill the skill"?
The old "drill the skill" strategy of learning math facts was based solely on memory. Any strategy that is based solely on memory has a weak foundation. A first step for helping math facts stick is for students to understand what they are being asked to memorize. Our goal would be for students to both understand and retain basic math facts. So, how might teachers do this?
Provide opportunities for students to model math facts with counters, number lines, and area grids.
Pose investigations to explore the patterns in math facts.
Focus attention on properties that simplify the task (e.g., understanding the commutative property allows them to expand their repertoire of known facts - if they know 3×9, then they know 9×3).
Have students talk about what they notice with connected facts (e.g., How do ×4 facts relate to ×8 facts? How do ×9 facts relate to ×10 facts? How does 20÷4 relate to 4×5?).
Engage students in interactive math fact practice. Rather than flash cards, select engaging and varied tasks that give students lots of exposure to the fact sets.
I have included a few sites below to give you some more perspectives on fact fluency.
Edweek has a great supporting article for assessing and teaching fact fluency.
This blog has several items for assessing fact fluency.
