Self-Monitoring of Pace to Improve Math Fluency of High School Students with Disabilities

Abstract

This study illustrates how a behavioral self-management intervention, which combined tactile and visual cued self-monitoring, self-graphing, and goal setting, improved the math fluency of five high school students with various disabilities during independent math practice. The intervention helped students monitor, adjust, and increase the pace at which they produced answers to simple addition and subtraction problems during daily 3-minute sessions. Using the self-management techniques, the students systematically increased the number and pace of correct responses, and concurrently, kept the number of error responses minimal and maintained or improved accuracy of responses. The paper includes recommendations for teaching students how to monitor their own academic performances rather than relying on teachers.