AR: Math Facts data

I was curious to see how my students this year have compared to last year's students in regards to basic facts.
I am not sure that it is fair to compare the 2 classes but if I do, I have seen a tremendous difference in doing so.

• My students this year are relatively close to where they ended up in April last school year.
• Students are actually doing much better than students were at this time last year.

I have a hard time in looking at the average as I have a few students who fall on both end of the spectrum. However, I do have 3 students that are in title one but also I am keeping my eye on for RtI purposes as they need a lot of support in reading and in math. They have come along way but in my experience they could easily fall into special education. Even though I have seen progress, I am unsure if math games are the most effective way to improve math fluency.

My students seem to still get stuck on  the plus 9 facts or those larger number facts. I would like to find a game that would help students to do better with those plus nine facts. I might have to talk about and discuss that more during our number sense discussions. I have tried to help students refer to using a plus 10 and then taking one away but students have struggled with that idea. Some have picked it up but those are the ones who already have the plus nines mastered.

With the hectic schedule and short week, we will get back on track next week with math games and number sense activities.
Here is what I have come up with in finding the median, mode, range, and average of my data from this past week and with last year's students.

	Now (Nov.2011)	Dec. 2010	Apr. 2010
Median	36	20	37
Mode	9,34,36,38,39	19	38
Range	39	37	66
Ave.	31.94	23.38	38.58

I am wondering what will change in the coming 2 weeks. Will student scores increase much more? At what point will I see very little progress? I have seen growth but how can I further develop students speed on their written timed test? I have a few who like to erase or still put their pencils down. With only 1 minute, there is not much time for error or correction.