Background of the Study

A few years ago a British politician, Stephen Byers, made a harmless error in an interview. The

right honorable minister was asked to give the answer to 7 x 8 and he gave the answer of 54,

instead of the correct 56. His error prompted widespread ridicule in the national media,

accompanied by calls for a stronger emphasis on ‘times table’ memorization in schools. This past

September the Conservative education minister

for England, a man with no education experience, insisted that all students in England memorize

all their times tables up to 12 x 12 by the age of 9. This requirement has now been placed into the

UK’s mathematics curriculum and will result, I predict, in rising levels of math anxiety and

students turning away from mathematics in record numbers. The US is moving in the opposite

direction, as the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS) de-emphasize the rote

memorization of math facts. Unfortunately misinterpretations of the meaning of the word

‘fluency’ in the CCSS are commonplace and publishers continue to emphasize rote

memorization, encouraging the persistence of damaging classroom practices across the United

States (Jo Boaler).

Mathematics facts are important but the memorization of math facts through times table

repetition, practice and timed testing is unnecessary and damaging. The English minister’s

mistake when he was asked 7 x 8 prompted calls for more memorization. This was ironic as his

mistake revealed the limitations of memorization without ‘number sense’. People with number

sense are those who can use numbers flexibly. When asked to solve 7 x 8 someone with number

sense may have memorized 56 but they would also be able to work out that 7 x 7 is 49 and then

add 7 to make 56, or they may work out ten 7’s and subtract two 7’s (70-14). They would not
have to rely on a distant memory. Math facts, themselves, are a small part of mathematics and

they are best learned through the use of numbers in different ways and situations. Unfortunately

many classrooms focus on math facts in unproductive ways, giving students the impression that

math facts are the essence of mathematics, and, even worse that the fast recall of math facts is

what it means to be a strong mathematics student. Both of these ideas are wrong and it is critical

that we remove them from classrooms, as they play a large role in the production of math

anxious and disaffected students (Jo Boaler).

According to Kling, fluency is developed when students have the opportunity to deliberately and

explicitly move through three developmental phases by building reasoning strategies. In general,

children begin solving math facts through counting (Phase 1), progress to using reasoning

strategies to derive unknown facts (Phase 2), and finally, develop mastery with their facts (Phase

3). If students simply memorize math facts as rote facts (in other words, skip Phase 2), they might

fail to develop important conceptual understandings, which puts them at a disadvantage when

attempting to engage in more advanced math work (Kling & Bay-Williams 2015).

https://medium.com/inspired-ideas-prek-12/a-research-based-approach-to-math-fact-fluency-that-

also-promotes-a-love-of-mathematics-31f9d7e8099f

The K to 12 Curriculum has been the basic education curriculum of the Philippines since the

school year 2011 to 2012. One of the major goals of the curriculum (perhaps what DepEd

Secretary Bro. Armin Luistro refers to as “a change in perspective”) is making education truly

relevant to the learners by using

materials and techniques that are applicable to the learners’ daily lives. In particular, critical

thinking and problem solving are now regarded as the twin goals of mathematics teaching (K to

12 Curriculum Guide, 2012, p. 3). This is a deviation from the common perspective that

mathematics is all about memorizing formulas and solving equations.

Borja’s (2011) study showed that among the components of mathematical creativity (fluency,

flexibility and originality), students performed best in fluency and least in originality, implying

that generating many correct solutions is the easiest and coming up with original solutions is the

most difficult.

However, this result is in contrast with what Leikin (2009) found that originality is the

strongest component of mathematical creativity; therefore, efforts should be focused on the other

areas of creativity. Furthermore, Kattuo, Kontoyianni, Pitta-Pantazi and Christou (2011) claimed

that the average mathematical ability students have an average performance across fluency,

flexibility and originality.

https://po.pnuresearchportal.org/ejournal/index.php/normallights/article/view/1237/391

In the Philippine there are many activities or games that we create related to mathematics.

This activity will become a way of teaching in improving the mathematics learning the way of

simple activity to exercise their ability in mathematics problem like multiplication division

addition and subtraction. There is many research on how the skill in math of the student will

improve the way of playing games related to mathematics.

One of the Example in mathematics game is Damath rule in playing the game, the one with a

highest points or score will be the winner. Damath came from the word Dama one of the Filipino

game use the chips the Damath game is created by a Filipino from sorsogon.

Many mathematics teacher was determining what is the best way of teaching in regards of

mathematics subject, one of the challenging student’s subject to learn. The researcher was

motivated to determine if will improve the fluency of the children in mathematics in playing a

game. Providing the different activities and their needs to improve their fluency in mathematics

subject. Hope that the result of the research can help to the researcher come up with the fluency

of the students in lower grades in adaptation of educational math games.