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Math Practice 🔢

Practice math problems at your level

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Practise arithmetic at a difficulty that adapts to how you are doing, with immediate feedback on each answer. Covers addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

The goal is fluency rather than speed for its own sake. Recalling that seven eights are fifty-six, instead of working it out each time, frees attention for whatever the arithmetic is actually part of.

How to use it

  1. Choose an operation and difficulty, or let it adapt as you answer.
  2. Answer each problem and read the immediate feedback.
  3. Practise regularly in short sessions rather than occasional long ones.

Building arithmetic fluency

  • Learn the number bonds to ten first. Almost all mental addition decomposes into these.
  • Learn the times tables to twelve by heart. Every multiplication and division problem beyond that builds on them.
  • Use rounding and adjusting for awkward numbers: 47 plus 38 is easier as 47 plus 40 minus 2.
  • For multiplying by nine, multiply by ten and subtract the number. For multiplying by five, halve and multiply by ten.
  • Prioritise accuracy before speed. Fast wrong answers rehearse the wrong fact, which is worse than slow correct ones.

Frequently asked questions

Why does mental arithmetic fluency matter if calculators exist?
Because working memory is limited. Recalculating basic facts consumes attention that is then unavailable for the larger problem, which is why fluency helps most in exactly the situations where the arithmetic is not the point.
How often should a child practise?
Short daily sessions of five to ten minutes are considerably more effective than a long weekly one, because recall is built by repeated retrieval spread over time.
What if answers are consistently wrong?
Drop the difficulty until they are consistently right, then build up. Practising at a level that produces frequent errors rehearses mistakes rather than correcting them.