Turning "Mad Minutes" on their head!

Warning: This post will push buttons and I am ok with that. Every time I share this story during a workshop, I have push back from one or two people. That's ok. Everyone is at a different stage in their learning based on their own experiences. I am simply sharing my experiences and my observations with the students I have worked with. Some of you may question whether or not I expect my students to memorize their basic facts. The Alberta Curriculum requires students to recall their facts.


When I was in elementary school, I was great at memorizing. I could learn facts very quickly. People told me that I must be smart because I had memorized so much and so easily! I was very proud of this ability.

My teachers would give us Mad Minutes. These both thrilled me and terrified me. I knew my facts so I was pretty confident. How fast could I answer all the questions this time? At the same time, I was always terrified that I would make a mistake. If I made a mistake, nobody would think I was smart any more.

In my current role, I get to speak to a lot of adults. Some have a loving relationship with math. Others hate it. When I ask them why they hate math, more often than not, I hear horror stories regarding Mad Minutes. This is not the only reason they hate math but often it was the beginning of the downfall. Mad Minutes had taught some of them that you could only be "good" at math if you were fast and if you could memorize. We know that this is not true. When I am thinking deeply about math, I am not fast. I am making connections to other ideas. I am looking for nuances. I am analyzing. I am trying to find patterns. This can not be done quickly. I spend a lot of time talking with adults about the misconceptions that math is all about being fast and a good memorizer.

Let's take a quick peek into the past...
When I taught grade 3, I knew I wanted to do something different. I didn't want to put the time pressure on students but I still wanted to use Mad Minutes. So, my first change to Mad Minutes occurred when I displayed a "count up" timer on my board. My students all started with papers that displayed 10 questions on the 2 times table. They all started when I started the timer. When they finished, they would look at the timer and record the time they had finished at.  I collected all the papers and marked them. The next day, we repeated this process...and so on and so on. When a student answered all 10 questions correctly in 30 seconds, I upgraded them and gave them the 3 times table questions. Eventually students were working on all different levels of facts so I put many copies of each of the facts into separate folders so they would come in from recess and grab their applicable mad minute, wait for me to tell them to start, write it, rinse and repeat.

I was very proud of the change that I had made. It was still about memorizing the facts. It was still about getting faster. I felt that my change had taken away the stigma though of "fast and memorization = good math student".

Fast forward 10 years. I give a "mad minute" and mark my students work. Suzy does all the questions and gets them all right. What does that tell me? Suzy knows her facts. Did I already know that? Yep or Probably.  Jill does all the questions and gets them all wrong. What does that tell me? Think about it for a moment. Did you say that Jill doesn't know her facts? That might be true. It's also possible that Jill's dog died last night or her parents had a fight or she's mad at you or... There are many reasons that she might have received the mark she did. What about Patty who finished half the questions but got them all right? Take a moment to think about her. Is it because she needed more time to finish? Was she counting on her fingers? Was she working merrily along and then saw a snowflake out the window? I had an epiphany. I realized that those mad minutes weren't giving me any information about my students that I probably didn't already know OR I had to go talk to them anyways to get more information.

Before I share how I turned mad minutes on their head, let me share some concerns that are always shared with me when I talk about changing mad minutes.

Supporters of mad minutes will tell me that students need to learn to deal with pressure and mad minutes teach them that. I agree that we all end up working under pressure in our lives and knowing how to do that effectively is an important skill. I'm not sure that it's something that an 8 year old needs to learn under these circumstances. I can find better ways to help them learn that.

Supporters of mad minutes will tell me that mad minutes motivate students to learn their facts. They want to beat their score. Yes, this is true for some students. Is some students good enough for me in my classroom? Nope. I want more for all my students.

Some teachers will tell me about the changes they've made either to how they frame the activity or how they implement it. I love hearing about those changes!

Do I still want my students to master their basic facts? Yes! It's part of the Alberta curriculum that students master those basic facts. It has always been in the curriculum. It was never removed, despite what some people claim. All you have to do is go to the grade 3-5 curriculum and look for those multiplication facts. The clarifications introduced in 2014 more explicitly stated the need for students to recall the facts. Interestingly enough, even though mastery and recall are specifically stated in the curriculum, some will argue that mastery and recall is not the same thing as memorization.

What is mastery? They are able to recall their facts when needed AND they understand those facts and what they mean. What is recall? Recall occurs when students commit the facts to memory and retrieve them when needed. (Source)

I think of it this way...everybody has two toolboxes. One contains the "basic facts" that you have mastered. 3x5 = 15, 4x2 = 8, etc. You are able to retrieve these facts without thinking about it or figuring them out. You just know.

Your other toolbox is your strategy toolbox. This box contains all the strategies that your understand and use. It may include the traditional algorithm, doubling, knowing the distributive property, etc.

Now think of these two students: Joey has a very large basic fact toolbox. He's in grade 3 but has memorized everything up to 12x12. However, his strategy toolbox is very small.

Steven, on the other hand, has a very small basic fact toolbox. He is still working on committing the grade 3 requirements to memory. However, his strategy toolbox has several well used, well understood strategies that he accesses whenever he needs to.

Which student will be more successful?  Steven. He has the strategies mastered to help him figure out anything he doesn't know. Joey will often struggle to figure out what he doesn't have memorized because he doesn't have a large strategy toolbox.

Where do I want my students to be at? I want them to have a healthy strategy toolbox AND a healthy basic fact toolbox.

Ok ok. Enough background. This isn't a groundbreaking, earth shattering idea. It is a small change that I made.

I'm going to use a simple addition mad minute. I apologize that all of the questions are vertical. I typically like to have about 50/50 vertical/horizontal layouts. I figured for this blog post example, it would work.

Everything written below in normal text is something that I say during the activity. If it is in italics, then it is something I do or notice.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This week, we have been working on facts of 10. Can someone tell me what a fact of ten is?
Students explain that two numbers that add to ten would be considered a fact of ten.

Can someone give me an example?
7+3, 2+8

I display just the top row of questions on the SmartBoard for students to see.

I have placed some questions on the board. If it is a fact of ten, we are going to draw a rectangle around it. Is the first question a fact of ten? Yes. Let's draw a rectangle around it.
I draw a big enough rectangle that it leaves me some space inside to answer the question but I do NOT answer it.

Let's look at the next question. Is it a fact of ten? No. Do I draw a rectangle around it? No. What about the next one? No.

I am going to hand out your sheet. Please keep it face down on your desk for now.
When they are all handed out...
When I say go, you will turn over your sheet and find as many questions as you can that are facts of ten. What are you going to do when you find one? Draw a rectangle around it.
I am only going to give you one minute though. You might not find them all and that's ok as long as you keep looking for the entire minute. Remember, do NOT answer anything! Just draw rectangles. Ready? Go.

Students have one minute.

Stop! Now, I am going to give you one minute to answer JUST the questions you drew rectangles around. If you don't finish, that's ok as long as you keep going until your time is up. If you finish before the time is up, you can look for any you  might have missed.  Go.

Students have one minute to answer the questions.

Let's go through the questions. Is 9+1 a fact of ten? Yes we already drew a rectangle around it.

How much is 9+1? 10. I write 10.

What about 9+5? No.

3+3? No.
Keep going until you have gone through all the questions.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another week, I would give them the same sheet, either a fresh copy or this used copy. Maybe we've been working on doubles (ex. 3+3, 4+4). This time we will circle the doubles questions for 1 minute and then answer for 2 minutes. I only gave 1 minute on the "facts of 10" activity because all of the answers were 10. All other strategies will need more time so I give them 2 minutes of working time instead of 1 minute.

This process helps students look for questions that specific strategies are most useful for. They are quickly analyzing a question before solving it. They aren't panicking about getting all the questions done, resulting in the silly mistakes that often occur. 

As I am typing this, I am thinking about extensions that I could introduce. So here is a new one for you...if a student finishes before the 2 minutes is up and they have checked to make sure they have found all questions, they can create and answer their own questions based on the strategy they are working on. For example, we might be working on doubles addition to 9+9. The student might extend to 10+10, 11+11, etc on their paper.

When I am finished sharing this idea with teachers, I still have some "yeah butters". This is one of the areas that some people are unwilling to change in. All I ask them to do is try it with students. See what happens. Listen to the conversations about their thinking. Check their anxiety levels. If the teacher is willing to try it 3 or 4 times with a positive mindset, I feel confident that it will be a win for the teacher and for the students.

Reflection question for you: How do you assess students' mastery of basic facts? What do you like about it? Dislike?