Here is a link to a quick, one-minute explanation of the paper-and-pencil version of Rocket Math.
Here’s where you can get started
using Rocket Math with a
(normally $49 a year).
math facts
Four star rating for Rocket Math Apps
Rocket Math App received 4 Stars!
App Names: Rocket Math Add at Home, Add at School, Multiply at Home, and Multiply at School
Developer’s name: Rocket Math, LLC
App Link :
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rocket-math-multiply-at-home/id1048024368?mt=8
Primary School Apps (5-7 Years)
Educational App Store Review
Rocket Math is an offshoot of an existing programme for schools designed to increase children’s speed and fluency in answering simple arithmetic. This app encourages frequent short sessions and is supported by plenty of information explaining its purpose and methods.
The purpose of Rocket Math is to build what its developer terms “automaticity” in arithmetic. A fluent reader does not need to decode simple and frequently encountered words letter by letter. The same can be true for frequently encountered arithmetic.
When automaticity is achieved in arithmetic the answers are available in an instant. The advantages of this, beyond speed, are that it leaves more of the person’s mental processes available for other aspects of the problem. If a person does not have to think about achieving simple arithmetic answers, he or she can concentrate on the more complex and lengthier aspects of a problem.
Rocket Math the app follows on from a well-established programme of the same name based on traditional written resources. Repeat practice and a steady increase in the breadth of the covered arithmetic are at the heart of its methods.
Children are taken through a series of stages in which they are faced with a rapid succession of arithmetic questions. Remember, the purpose of this app is to build fluency in frequently encountered arithmetic problems, not complex ones. As such, the questions will be simple ones and, at first, until the breadth expands, there will be little variation in them. Only three seconds is allowed per question so, for some children, developing enough fluency to progress will be difficult but others will thrive on the challenge.
Answers are given by typing them onto a built-in number pad. The app is simple to use and looks attractive. Its space-travel styling and theme add a game-like feel although it is not a game. Speech provides a response to incorrect answers and provides encouragement between levels. It all works very well and provides the exact type of practice that it promises.
An unusual but useful feature is that the app enforces its little-and-often recommendations by insisting on a thirty-minute break after 5 minutes of play. As multiple sessions are likely to yield better results than a single, marathon session, this is an excellent feature that will prevent children from relying on a last-minute catch-up rather than a steady engagement with the app. This, combined with a useful breakdown of each child’s performance in the student report screen, provides reassurance to adults that their children are making the best possible use of the app.
A family of apps is available and potential buyers should think about which they need. Two of the apps cover addition and subtraction and two cover multiplication and division. Your choice here is obviously dependent on what aspect you would like to cover.
The remaining choice is between a school and a home version. They are identical in functionality except that the home version is free to download with a lengthy trial period. The school version has a flat, one-off, fee. Prospective teachers would still be wise to download the home version first so that they can appraise the app’s suitability.
If they choose to utilise the app within their school then buying the school version will be a simpler process than the in-app purchase of the home version. It will also allow schools to utilise the volume purchasing programme whereby they can receive a discount for buying twenty or more of the same app.
Parents will be pleased to see that the app caters for up to three children. As each child engages with the app, parents can check to see how they are performing and offer help, encouragement or rewards as they see fit. Some useful background information on the app’s purposes and usage are provided within the app itself and a more comprehensive overview of the Rocket Math ethos is available on the developer’s website.
All of the Rocket Math apps provide a learning opportunity that is tightly focused on realising their goal of improving children’s arithmetic fluency. As such, if this is a goal that you also share, you will find them good value and useful apps.
“Knowing” means never having to figure it out
Most people, for example, know their name, by memory.
In a previous blog I discussed What does CCSS mean by “know from memory?”
A reader asked the following question:
This topic of “know from memory” is something I have been digging into as a special educator. I wonder what your thoughts are about whether certain accommodations from these “know from memory” standards would actually be modifying the curriculum?
For example, if we used “extra time to respond” and the student had to use their fingers or some other method to count, would they then not be doing the standard?
This relates to where I’m at in middle school math, but I think that it’s reflected in the continuum of the common core maths.
Thanks.
Dr. Don’s response:
Actually, your example is very clear that it is not “knowing from memory.” You are describing “deriving from a strategy” or what I call, “figuring it out.” When you know it from memory, when you recall the answer, then you stop having to “figure it out.”
Knowing from memory and figuring something out are two very different things. I used to ask workshop participants to imagine sitting next to me in a bar and asking me for my name. What if, instead of saying, “Hi, my name is Don,” something different happened? What if, like the man pictured above, I was puzzled and said, “Wait a second, I have it here on my driver’s license.” Most people would likely turn their attention elsewhere while wondering what kind of traumatic brain injury I had sustained! They would very likely say to themselves, “OMG, that man doesn’t know his own name.”
The purpose of the verbal rehearsal that is a daily part of Rocket Math is to cement these basic facts in memory. Then when a student says to themselves, “8 times 7 is,” the answer pops into their mind with no effort. It takes quite a bit of practice to achieve that. However, the ability to instantly recall the answers to basic math facts makes doing mathematical computation a relative breeze. It make seeing relationships among numbers very obvious. It makes reducing fractions and finding common denominators easy. That’s why the Common Core thinks “knowing from memory” is so worthwhile. It’s why I began promoting Rocket Math in the first place.
Do you know the active ingredient in Rocket Math?
Timed tests are not the important part of Rocket Math.
The “active ingredient” in the Rocket Math prescription, the thing that makes it work, is not timed tests. Timed tests don’t actually teach and often don’t really help students develop fluency. The usual timed tests of a random selection of all the facts can assess fluency in math–but they don’t work to develop it!
The “active ingredient,” the thing that makes Rocket Math effective, is verbal rehearsal. When students practice with their partner the students read the facts and RECALL the answers from memory and say them aloud. That verbal rehearsal is what cements them into memory. Reading the fact and recalling the answer from memory strengthens the neural connection.
Why do we give the daily tests in Rocket Math? Not to teach, but only to assess whether the facts introduced thus far have been learned well enough for the student to have new facts added to what they are learning. Individual students learn at different rates. Some students need only a couple of days of practice to memorize two new facts while others may need several days. The purpose of the daily tests is just to see if the student needs more practice time, or is ready to “swallow” some more facts.
As I note in my basic training presentation, “It’s like feeding mush to a baby. You have to make sure they have swallowed the last mouthful before you give them more.” See an explanation in this You Tube video in our Rocket Math channel: https://youtu.be/J8cWSDG0Di8
Keeping track of progress in Rocket Math
Which students are progressing as fast as they should be in Rocket Math?
And how fast should they be progressing, anyway?
Over the years of helping teachers and schools implement Rocket Math I have learned that a complete laissez-faire attitude about student progress can mean that some students get stuck for weeks on the same sheet. Needless to say, students who get stuck, come to hate Rocket Math. When this happens, those students don’t get through all the operations they should learn. So we need to intervene, and give them more help. It turns out that some students need more practice, sometimes two or three times more practice, to learn the facts than their peers. To get such students through one operation a year means they have to have extra practice sessions scheduled in each day. Here’s a link to a blog about how to provide extra help.
But which students need extra practice sessions? Under Resources/Educator Resources I’ve created two versions of a tool that can help.
Whole Class Excel Rocket Math (2 operations in a year) Aimline. This is pictured to the right. It is needed for 2nd grade and 4th grade and up when students need to finish one operation and do a second one in a year. The expectations needed to pass two operations in one year are basically that students should pass two sets each week. If they have studied some the year before, they will be able to pass sets in the first operation at a quick pace. For example if they have done much of Rocket Math Addition in first grade, in second grade they should be able to pass those addition sets again in a day or two. That will put them ahead of the expectations and they should have a plus by their name most of the year. Conversely, if they are not able to pass sets quickly, (see the students highlighted in yellow) they will get a minus by their name and should start getting extra sessions scheduled daily.
How does the Excel Aimline work?
Please note: The pictured EXAMPLE Rocket Math Excel Aimline is available from the link or in the Resources/Educator Resources page for you to download.
Take the blank template and save it for next year. Then fill out one for this year. Look at a calendar and on row 4 enter the month and on row 5 enter the starting day of each week in the school year. so each column numbered 1 through 36 will correspond to a week in your school year. In row 7 you see the green expected set to be passed by the end of that week. At the end of week 1 we expect that students will have at least passed Set A. By the end of week 2 they should have passed Set C to be on pace to finish two operations in a year.
Entering student names. Starting in row 10 you enter the student names in column B. This class only has ten students, but I’m guessing yours probably has more! Cool thing about excel is you only have to enter those names once. And if you’re really good you can freeze that column so you can easily see it later in the year.
Entering weekly information. Each week grab all the student folders and for each student enter the highest set they have passed. You can see that from the Rocket Chart on the outside of the folder, so you don’t even have to open the folders. If the letter they have passed is equal or higher than the green set expected at the top of the column for that week, then put a plus by the letter they have passed.
Look at Alvin Ailey at the top of my class list. Week 1 he had passed both Set A and B, so I wrote “B” in his square. I put a plus because it is exceeds the expected level for the first week. By the second week he had also passed Sets C and D. Only up to “C” is expected, so I wrote “D” and also gave him a plus. Alvin is rocking it!
Look at Cindy Crawford a little further down the class list. Week 1 she had passed Set A, so I wrote an “A” in her she got a plus because she met the expectation. But by week 2 she had only passed Set B, when C is expected to be passed, so I wrote “B” in her square, with a minus indicating she is below expectation. Now I highlighted her square yellow, but that’s kind of advanced so you don’t really have to do that. Only Excel experts can do that, although it really makes it easy to pick out who needs help. We can see that Cindy continues to make slow progress and continues to get minuses. She needs to have extra practice sessions scheduled to finish two operations this year. That pace is fine for one operation per year, but not two.
Look down at Gary Grummond. He didn’t pass even Set A by the end of the first week so I wrote “np” in the first square. He continues to make progress the next few weeks, but not fast enough to complete two operations in a year.
Row 8 Fraction of students meeting expectation. After entering all the students for the week you can see how you are doing overall in your class. Make a fraction with the numerator being the number of students who are meeting the expectation over the denominator of the number of students in the class. You want a high fraction nearer to 1.
If that fraction falls below 70%, meaning more than 30% of your class is not on track, then you should institute a class-wide intervention. Either add an extra practice session each day, or see if there is room to improve the quality of practice. See these blogs and posts about how to monitor for the quality of practice.
- https://www.rocketmath.com/2017/10/08/are-you-off-to-a-good-start-with-rocket-math/
- https://www.rocketmath.com/2015/10/01/monitor-monitor-monitor/
Whole Class Excel Rocket Math (1 operatipon per year) Aimline. In grades 1 and 3 where students are expected only to complete one operation in a year, you can use this Excel Aimline. The expectations needed to pass one operations in a year are basically that students should pass one set each week. Everything else about how you use the excel form is the same. Note that if you want students to do two operations in the year (for example both subtraction and multiplication in 3rd grade) then you would use the two operation aimline.
Looking for free math worksheets?
Do you want your students to learn OR are you just keeping them busy?
It’s OK if you need busywork. 
It’s critical to keep some of your students occupied in order for you to have the peace and quiet you need to teach other students. Those free math worksheets of random facts are fine for busywork, provided students already know the facts.
Get a 60 day trial for only $13
BUT
(and this is a big but) if you want students to actually learn facts, you need math worksheets that are more systematic than the usual fact practice worksheets. A random mix of problems (on those free math worksheets) is fine for practicing what you already know, but it is USELESS for learning new facts.
Students who don’t know their facts are left painfully counting on their fingers to do their “work.” This just wastes their time and makes them come to HATE math.
I know, because I made my students do it for years. 🙁
I discovered that with systematic practice students can actually learn math facts!
In order to learn new facts students must concentrate on a few they don’t know and practice those particular facts until they know them “by memory” without having to figure them out. After students have learned those they can then tackle a few more. That’s the only way to learn a bunch of facts. That’s what Rocket Math does. Watch this video to see it in action.
Rocket Math worksheets are not free, but they will actually teach. 
Each sheet (A-Z) adds two new facts and their reverses, making the process of learning them painless. By the time students have worked their way through the A-Z worksheets of an operation they know the facts “by heart” or as the Common Core calls it “by memory.”
If LEARNING is your goal, you’ll need something more effective than the free math worksheets.
Rocket Math has a MONEY-BACK guarantee.
If you spend the $13 to get a trial subscription and you decide Rocket Math doesn’t work or you don’t want to use the program, we’ll gladly refund your money.
Plus
Students have more fun and learn better when they are practicing orally, with a partner so they can get corrections and extra teaching on any facts they don’t know well. That is part of how Rocket Math works. So it won’t just be busywork. Your students will actually learn the facts and be proud of it.
If you can afford $13,
Click here to get started with a 60-day trial subscription to Rocket Math
The 100-point observation form: How well do you implement Rocket Math?
Use the 100-point observation form to evaluate your implementation.
Use the 100-point Rocket Math Observation form to self-evaluate, or have someone observe your class doing Rocket Math 
and use the form to evaluate you. The form observes and evaluates seventeen different indicators of the quality of your Rocket Math implementation.
You or your observer begin by looking at four important indicators of the quality of student practice. The quality of the paired practice of your students provides most of the value of Rocket Math. Accordingly, these four indicators provide nearly half of the 100 points. If one or two of these things are not in place (tutors aren’t listening carefully and correcting errors AND hesitations, for example) the implementation will not earn high marks, because students won’t be learning nearly as well as they should or could.
The other thirteen indicators are mostly about the efficiency with which Rocket Math runs. If it takes more than 15 minutes a day to complete Rocket Math, it won’t happen every day. If Rocket Math doesn’t happen every day, students do not learn nearly as well as they should or could.
Where can you find the 100-point Observation form?
There are three places you can find this handy form. (1) It is included in hard copy form in the Administrator and Coach Handbook which we sell and ship to you.
(2) The 100-point Observation form is also available for free on the Resources/Educator’s Resource page on our website where you can find this link to its pdf.
(3) And finally in the Rocket Math subscription filing cabinet, in the Forms and Information drawer, there is a section (pictured on the left) that is devoted to all the information in the Administrator and Coach Handbook and near the bottom you’ll see the 100-point Observation form for you to print out.
5 easy ways to get help running Rocket Math.
Here are 5 ways to get help with the procedures for successful Rocket Math implementation.
1.) Use the ***NEW*** search function. At the upper left of the blue navigation bar is an icon of a magnifying glass. Click on that and a search bar opens in the middle of the page. Click within the search bar and you can type in whatever you are looking for. It will bring up blogs, parts of the directions, basically anything I’ve written on the subject–which is a lot. You can get pretty specific very fast, so try this first. I’m very excited to have added this feature this week, which is why it is top of my list!
2) FAQs. Look at the Rocket Math FAQs page. Click on the linked words to the left, or navigate to it. The FAQs page is the third 
item under ABOUT in navigation. The FAQs page displays all of the questions from the teacher directions, and my answers, so you can scroll down to the topic you need quickly. However, all the FAQs will show up in the search function as well.
2.5) The FAQs are also available in the Rocket Math filing cabinet. They are in the top drawer, the “Forms and Information” drawer of the filing cabinet. There are titles of the FAQs so you can open and print any one you wish. Good for sharing with other staff.
3) Rocket Math YouTube channel. You can go to the Rocket Math YouTube channel. Click on the linked words to the left, or search for Rocket Math in You Tube. If you scroll down the page you can click on “View Full Playlist” and then you’ll be able to see all the topics that are available. Right now there are 37 videos, but that could change if we add some more.
4) DVD training. Order the Workshop Training DVD (#2004) for $29 This is the whole training from Dr. Don filmed and broken into chapters. It is over 3 hours and gives a lot of rationale for the procedures we recommend. Very helpful if Rocket Math is new for your staff. Really important to do things as recommended. Having coached this in many schools for many years, I can promise you it will go better if you follow the directions!
5) Contact Dr. Don. Really. You can call me (800) 488-4854 during west coast school hours and I’ll probably be able to answer the phone directly. It’s a joy for me to talk about implementing Rocket Math with teachers, so don’t be shy. But if you don’t reach me, please send an email to don@rocketmath.com rather than leave your phone number because during the school day teachers are very hard to reach. I’d rather just write an answer in an email so we don’t miss each other. And if it is a new question I’ll probably turn my answer into a blog that can be found through the search function.
Without the directions you may get lost!
What happens when teachers don’t have a copy of the Rocket Math Teacher Directions? Bad things!
When teachers don’t have the written directions to Rocket Math, the essence of the program usually gets lost. Procedures get modified and modified over the years until they are not even close to what should be occurring. Sometimes we have found schools that are not even providing daily oral practice. Other schools don’t give the answer keys to the peer tutors. Other schools don’t give the writing speed test and make up impossible-to-reach goals for students. We often see teachers implementing the “Rocket Math” program incorrectly and wondering why it doesn’t work. We ask them if they have read the teacher directions, and they say they didn’t know there were any. When teachers have never seen the directions, is it any wonder they don’t know what they are supposed to be doing? Hear-say directions handed down over the years from one teacher to another just don’t convey all the important details. Teachers need the directions!
This is why I’d like you to have my complete directions for free. Even if you purchased Rocket Math ten years ago and haven’t gotten the updated versions since then, you can have these directions for free. I have them in three places. I have the directions broken out into FAQs on their own web page here. That’s easy for quick reference.
The second place I have the Teacher Directions is as a downloadable booklet you can print out and distribute. The Rocket Math Teacher Directions for the worksheet program booklet is here. Please print this out and give to your teachers, especially in schools that began implementing several years back. Read them and have a discussion at a professional development time. You will be astounded at how much your implementation differs.
The third place I have the Teacher Directions is in the “filing cabinet on the web” for those of you who have the subscription. In the “Forms and Information” drawer we have the booklet and the FAQs which can be opened and printed out.
In school-wide implementations of Rocket Math, principals or math coaches need to take a leadership role. The Administrator and Coach Handbook gives you forms with what to “look-for” in a Rocket Math implementation. If you use that to observe Rocket Math in your classrooms you’ll quickly see whether or not things are going the way they should. If you have a subscription to Rocket Math you’ll find all of the chapters of the Administrator and Coach Handbook in the “Forms and Information” drawer of our filing cabinet on the web.
Please take the time to see that you or your teachers are implementing Rocket Math according to the directions. Trust me, it works SO MUCH BETTER if you do. I wouldn’t steer you wrong!
Timed Math Fact Fluency Expectations by Grade Level
Students should be automatic with the facts. How fast is fast enough to be automatic?
Editor’s Note: “Direct retrieval” is when you automatically remember something without having to stop and think about it.
Some educational researchers consider facts automatic when a response comes in two or three seconds (Isaacs & Carroll, 1999; Rightsel & Thorton, 1985; Thorton & Smith, 1988). However, performance is not automatic; direct retrieval when it occurs at rates that purposely “allow enough time for students to use efficient strategies or rules for some facts (Isaacs & Carroll, 1999, p. 513).”
Timed Math Fact Fluency Expectations by Grade Level
Most of the psychological studies have looked at automatic response time as measured in milliseconds and found that automatic (direct retrieval) response times are usually in the ranges of 400 to 900 milliseconds (less than one second) from presentation of a visual stimulus to a keyboard or oral response (Ashcraft, 1982; Ashcraft, Fierman & Bartolotta, 1984; Campbell, 1987a; Campbell, 1987b; Geary & Brown, 1991; Logan, 1988). Similarly, Hasselbring and colleagues felt students had automatized math facts when response times were “down to around 1 second” from the presentation of a stimulus until a response was made (Hasselbring et al. 1987).” If, however, students are shown the fact and asked to read it aloud, then a second has already passed. In which case you expect a timely response after reading the fact. “We consider mastery of a basic fact as the ability of students to respond immediately to the fact question. (Stein et al., 1997, p. 87).”
In most school situations, students take tests on one-minute timings. Expectations of automaticity vary somewhat. Translating a one-second-response time directly into writing answers for one minute would produce 60 answers per minute. However, Some children, especially in the primary grades, cannot write that quickly. “In establishing mastery rate levels for individuals, it is important to consider the learner’s characteristics (e.g., age, academic skill, motor ability). For most students, a rate of 40 to 60 correct digits per minute [25 to 35 problems per minute] with two or few errors is appropriate (Mercer & Miller, 1992, p.23).” This 35 problems per minute rate seem to be the lowest noted in the literature.
The Correct Math Fact Rates
Other authors noted research that indicated that “students who can compute basic math facts at a rate of 30 to 40 problems correct per minute (or about 70 to 80 digits correct per minute) continue to accelerate their rates as tasks in the math curriculum become more complex…[however],…students whose correct rates were lower than 30 per minute showed progressively decelerating trends when more complex skills were introduced. The minimum correct rate for basic facts should be set at 30 to 40 problems per minute, since this rate has been shown to be an indicator of success with more complex tasks (Miller & Heward, 1992, p. 100).” Rates of 40 problems per minute seems more likely to continue to accelerate than the lower end at 30.
What is the recommended time to finish problems?
Another recommendation was that “the criterion be set at a rate [in digits per minute] that is about 2/3 of the rate at which the student can write digits (Stein et al., 1997, p. 87).” For example, a student who writes 100 digits per minute expects to write 67 digits per minute. This translates to between 30 and 40 problems per minute. Howell and Nolet (2000) recommend an expectation of 40 correct facts per minute, with a modification for students who write at less than 100 digits per minute. The number of digits per minute is a percentage of 100, and you multiply that percentage by 40 problems to give the expected number of problems per minute. For example, a child who writes 75 digits per minute would expect 75% of 40 or 30 facts per minute.
If measured individually, a response delay of about 1 second would be automatic. In writing, 40 is the minimum, up to about 60 per minute for students who can write that quickly. Teachers themselves range from 40 to 80 problems per minute. Sadly, many school districts have expectations as low as 50 problems in 3 minutes or 100 problems in five minutes. These translate to rates of 16 to 20 problems per minute. At this rate, students can count answers on their fingers. So, this “passes” children who have only developed procedural knowledge of how to figure out the facts rather than the direct recall of automaticity.
Conclusion
With the right tools, any student can develop math fact fluency and have fun while doing it! Students use Rocket Math’s Subscription Worksheet Program to practice with partners, then take timed tests. Rocket Math also offers math facts practice online through the Rocket Math Online Game. Students can log in and play from any device, anywhere, any time of day! Start a free trial today.
Both the worksheet program and the online game help students master addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division math facts.