Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Spring 2025
Abstract
The purpose of this research was to determine the effect of incorporating daily mental math practice on students’ problem-solving and reasoning skills. This research was designed to address the issue of dropping mathematics test scores in the United States and the researcher’s observation regarding students commonly struggling with solving real-world problems. The researcher is a middle school math teacher who also teaches two high school courses. A quantitative study was conducted, and two assessments were used, taken as a pre-test and a post-test, to determine the effectiveness of the mental math intervention. One evaluation was designed to assess students’ mental math skills and another was designed to assess their problem-solving and reasoning skills. The mental math assessment consisted of 20 questions using all four operations. The problem-solving and reasoning assessment consisted of two performance tasks adapted from the curriculum used in the classroom. The mental math intervention lasted 12 days and consisted of students performing four mental calculations and discussing how they did their calculations. Students were explicitly taught strategies when needed. To analyze the results of the study a paired t-test was performed for both the mental math pre-test and post-test and the problem-solving and reasoning pre-test and post-test. The t-test revealed that the intervention had a positive and significant effect on students’ mental math, problem-solving, and reasoning skills. These findings show that incorporating daily mental math practice helps students develop problem-solving and reasoning skills.