Maths fluency: times tables and number facts to 20, right and quick

A number fact is fluent when a child knows the answer without working it out. Seven eights is then not seven sevens and one more seven, but simply 56. That is what makes the maths after it lighter: a child who still has to think about a table in the middle of a division loses the thread.

So quick counts as much as right here. The tool times every answer. A sum that was right but took longer than a few seconds is marked "not quick yet" in the result. That is the same idea as the Multiplication Tables Check in England: knowing a fact means knowing it fast.

This page is about that right and quick. How a child learns the tables one at a time is on Times table practice. Adding and taking away up to a thousand, from number bonds to crossing ten, is on Mental maths practice.

In Practise the tool keeps track of what went wrong or took too long. Those sums come back more often, and so do the ones around them: after a slip on 7 × 8 you also get 7 × 7, 7 × 9 and 8 × 7. Right and quick twice in a row, and a sum goes back to its normal turn.

A practice test lasts 20, 50 or 100 sums, or 1, 2, 3 or 5 minutes. It does not say whether an answer was right until the end, so a child keeps going as in a times tables test on paper. Then the result comes per table or kind of sum. A table that came up at least five times in that test, right every time and mostly quick, can be printed on a times tables certificate. A practice test of twenty sums over ten tables is too short for that, and the result says so.

The race is against the clock: 10, 5, 3 or 2 seconds per sum. It ends at the first mistake or when the time runs out, and shows how many sums you got and where it went wrong. The record for that choice and that pace stays in the browser.

As a guest the teacher sees nothing, because there is nothing: the sums, the answers and the name on the certificate stay in the browser and are never sent to Reppilo.

With a class under the school, on the school licence, a pupil signs in with their class code. They see no tiles and practise at their own level straight away. The tool picks tables or sums for each round: whichever they are furthest behind on for what their class is expected to know, or else whichever they practised longest ago. The teacher sees in the class grid who stands where and which facts are not quick yet. What a pupil practises is kept for a year and then removed.

A pupil with an account can take a practice test or a race too, under Choose your own tables or Choose your own sums. Those sums go into the class grid but do not count towards their level: a race is a challenge, not a measurement.

The teacher can also set a test, for one pupil, a few or the whole class, with a closing date if needed. The pupil then sees There is a test ready for you as soon as they open the tool. For each pupil the teacher sees whether they have not started, are working on it or have finished, and after that the score, what went wrong and what was not quick yet. After the test comes a one-line suggestion that the teacher can take on as a practice focus: those facts then come up more often, until they are right and quick. On the class page the teacher sees who is practising right now, and there is a printable report for a pupil, the class or a test.

On the school licence the class can also play together. The teacher chooses Together on the board, and the pupils sign in with the class code and choose Together too. Everyone gets the same 10, 20 or 30 sums in the same order and types the answer. A mistake leaves the right answer on screen for a moment: it costs time, but nobody is knocked out. Whoever gets the most right wins.

The board shows a bar for each pupil, with the leaders named above it. Which tables or sums come up is set on the class page under Playing together. Every sum goes into the class grid, but not into the pupil's level: in a race with the class the point is the game, not the time per sum.