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In this post, I will largely be focusing on the benefits of rote memorization in the context of math and when it’s appropriate and most effective. I do not believe it is appropriate in all circumstances and highly recommend you consider the negative consequences of rote memorization as well. This is a thoughtful article from Prodigy about rote memorization that addresses its pros and cons well.

Kids who know their basic math facts do better in advanced math classes than kids who do not. I’ve helped students with math from kindergarten to Algebra II. I can ALWAYS tell when someone was taught their basic facts (yes, they are still using them in Algebra II) using rote memorization over someone who was taught using other strategies.

But my experiences do not equate to enough to be an acceptable sample study, so in addition to my experiences, we will explore actual research as well.

Wanna skip the research and go straight to the fun part? Click here.

Say "rote memorization" in a room full of educators and watch what happens. It’ll be super awkward and no one will admit they are still using this strategy. We’re supposed to have moved past it by now and on to things that “work better.”

The thinking went like this: kids don't need to memorize their times tables anymore. They can use calculators. They can use strategies. What matters is understanding the concepts, not memorizing facts by rote. Discovery learning, not drilling.

I certainly think kids should have the understanding behind the math, but also, the lack of required memorization we’ve seen has contributed to a quiet crisis in math education that we're still living through.

I’m always ready to hear the current research and take into account differing opinions. But I also want to know what actually works and what makes learning feel worth doing. Math fact fluency is certainly a hot topic worth exploring.

Let's start with where kids actually are.

According to the NAEP — the Nation's Report Card — 61% of U.S. 4th graders scored below proficiency in mathematics in 2024. By 8th grade, that number climbs to 78%.

That's not a small problem. That's a structural one.

Researchers and educators have been pointing to a specific culprit for years: the widespread abandonment of math fact fluency. In 1989, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics introduced new standards that encouraged the use of calculators at all grade levels and explicitly recommended reducing time spent on rote memorization of math facts. Many states overhauled their curricula accordingly.

The intention was good. The results, measured across decades, have been harder to defend.

Experts are now beginning to argue that students are more likely to succeed in math when they develop automaticity in basic math facts. That means being able to instantly recall that 7×8=56 without any thought. No counting, no strategies, no figuring. Just knowing.

For example, a 2023 paper published in the International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, "Designing Mathematics Standards in Agreement with Science" by Hartman, Hart, Nelson, and Kirschner, explains these findings. The authors explain that completing complex math problems involves both your working memory and your long-term memory. Working memory is where active thinking happens. It’s where you solve problems, follow steps, and reason through challenges. The thing is, your working memory has a small capacity. In adults, the working memory can hold 3 to 5 pieces of information at once. But for a first grader, it's closer to 2 to 3 pieces of information.

On the other hand, long-term memory has essentially no capacity limit. Additionally, and this is the important piece, information retrieved from long-term memory doesn't consume working memory space.

Using decades of cognitive science research, the authors of that 2023 paper make the case that when a math fact has been thoroughly memorized, recalling it takes up a single slot in working memory. When it hasn't been memorized, a child has to calculate it on the spot, requiring that she stores numbers, the operation, and the in-progress answer simultaneously, often pushing working memory past its limit entirely. The result is what cognitive scientists call overload: in-progress information simply gets dropped and that’s where things start falling apart.

There are a million things I could say about what math entails that needs to be considered, but sticking to the topic, let’s consider that a child working through a multi-step word problem. In that very instance, that child has to think through:

If basic facts aren't automatic, the arithmetic alone consumes most of that limited working memory, leaving little capacity for anything else. The child isn't struggling because the problem is too hard. They're struggling because their brain is too full.

When facts live in long-term memory and surface instantly, the space that it would have taken in working memory stays available for the parts they can’t commit to memory: reasoning through the problem, catching errors, understanding what the answer means. As the paper puts it, automated recall means "the answer is not calculated but simply retrieved from memory." That's the difference between a kid who survives math class and one who can actually do math.

My personal belief is that the people at the top, the ones not actually teaching, but making decisions, felt rote memorization was antiquated and had been used for a few too many centuries. They wanted something newer and better to take it’s place and they were just beginning to get good data from studies on metacognition, so they “trendy” thing to do was to say rote memorization was out.

But as science, especially studies of the brain, has improved, this is what’s being found.

A Stanford University study (published in Nature Neuroscience) used brain scans to watch what happened as children developed math fact fluency over time. Researchers scanned kids ages 7–9 as they worked through basic arithmetic, then scanned them again about a year later.

They found that as children got better at recalling math facts, their brain activity physically shifted. It moved away from the prefrontal and parietal regions associated with effortful counting and figuring and toward the hippocampus, the brain's long-term memory center. The hippocampal connections literally became stronger and more stable as kids practiced.

Dr. Vinod Menon, the study's senior author, put it simply: "The stronger the connections, the greater each individual's ability to retrieve facts from memory." And Kathy Mann Koepke with the National Institutes of Health, which funded the study, added: "So learning your addition and multiplication tables and having them in rote memory helps." If the child's brain doesn't have to labor over simple arithmetic, there's more short-term memory space to absorb new concepts, giving them a genuine cognitive advantage over peers who are still counting on their fingers.

Basically, math fact fluency isn't just an outdated, boring study habit. It rewires how a child's brain does math.

The science here is more settled than the education debates might suggest. Here's what peer-reviewed research actually shows:

So, what we’re seeing isn’t that the understanding of how the math works doesn’t matter. It’s that we’ve gone too far with getting rid of things we considered outdated because they weren’t as fun or engaging. And we’ve paid the price…or our students have. So now we’ve got teenagers who struggle with algebra because they don’t know 3×4.

This is obviously my favorite part. As a heavy studier myself and someone who loves helping other people learn to love learning, “memorization” doesn’t have to mean doing flashcards at the table while everyone else is playing outside.

Memorization in 2026 can look like varied, low-pressure repetition; really, any repetition that gets those facts into the long-term memory. And there are fun ways to do it. I’m not saying your kids are gonna love it, but they also aren’t going to hate it or lose their love of learning in the process.

A regular deck of cards can become a math practice tool in about thirty seconds with no prep, no printing, no special purchase. Play "War," but instead of comparing two cards, players flip two cards each and have to multiply (or add) them together. Highest product wins the round.

The same thing can be done with dice. In fact, my son learned his basic math facts before kindergarten on accident while we were playing games like Trouble and Sorry. When we played board games, his brain picked up on how we were adding the two numbers together. I realized how power playing games could be when he started reciting math facts in the car one day and told me he learned it when we were playing games.

This can work with so many other games like Go Fish, Blackjack, memory, Uno, and the list goes on! And your kiddo thinks you’re playing a game and spending quality time together. Which is pretty awesome.

Looking for some recommendations? Here are some ones I love!

As a mom navigating kiddos with ADHD, using movement to practice math facts is one of my favorite ways to practice them with my kids. It can be as simple as having them do jumping jacks or frog hops while reciting a math fact or more involved if you’d like.

Here are some other ideas.

Movement is the BEST way to help any person learn. There are studies about it. I’ll be sure to write about it sometime.

Math fact riddles work on both sides of the brain. Kids solve a series of problems, then use the answers as a key to decode a hidden joke, fun fact, or mystery message. They are so motivated to get to the punchline that they forget they're drilling.

These are widely available as printable worksheets for every grade level and operation. Here are a few I recommend:

Multiplication songs are earworms by design. YouTube has hundreds of them, ranging from genuinely catchy to deeply questionable in production quality (both work, honestly). Skip-counting chants, rap-style times tables, and silly songs about the sevens have been helping kids memorize facts for generations.

It sounds too simple. It works anyway. The rhythm and melody create additional memory hooks that straight repetition doesn't. If your kid is humming "six times eight is forty-eight" in the car, that's a win.

If your kid is going to be on a screen anyway, there are apps and platforms that make math fact practice genuinely engaging:

Short sessions (15–20 minutes a few times a week) are more effective than long sessions. Consistency beats intensity.

Doubling a recipe is multiplication. Halving it is division. Measuring out 3/4 cup twice and asking how much that is — that's fractions, live and with stakes.

The kitchen is a math classroom where the reward is snacks, and kids who measure and calculate in real contexts build genuine number sense alongside their fact fluency. It's not a replacement for direct practice, but it's excellent reinforcement!

If you're in a classroom or homeschooling multiple children, it’s a little more challenging, but still doable.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

I’m not arguing for going back to the miserable timed drills of decades past, you know, the ones we see of the late 1800s on tv. I’m not saying conceptual understanding doesn't matter. I’m saying the research is clear: kids need both, and fluency has been the neglected half of the equation for too long.

The good news? Getting math facts into long-term memory doesn't have to be painful. It requires consistency, variety, and a low-pressure environment where getting it wrong is just part of the process.

The even better news: the payoff is real. A kid who knows their facts automatically is a kid who can actually think when completing higher level math problems.

That's what we're after.

What's working in your house or classroom? Drop it in the comments below and I may include it in a future issue of The Dig. Bonus points if it involves something unexpected.

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