Rosedale Traditional Builds Numeracy Skills with Fact Fluency Olympics 

June 9, 2026

While Italy hosted the Winter Olympics, Rosedale Traditional Community School hosted its own Olympic competition - in fact fluency! The goal of the Fact Fluency Olympics was to build confidence and flexibility with numbers while creating a strong sense of community. 

Numeracy is a focus of the district’s strategic plan. It’s about understanding and working with numbers in ways that support everyday problem solving and build curiosity and confidence. Fact fluency is important because it frees up students’ working memory to do more complex math. It’s harder for students to do complex problem-solving when they’re trying to recall basic arithmetic.

To kick off the Fact Fluency Olympics, educators used shared fact fluency kits. The kits ensured that learning was consistent across the school. K-2 students focused on skip counting and counting forward and backward within 10, 50, and 100. Grade 3-8 students worked on multiplication facts and strengthened their skip counting skills.

Four student teams - red, blue, green, and pink - worked together throughout the event. They earned medals for mastering new skills, from counting patterns to multiplication facts. Each day, the school tracked medal totals and posted new class and school-wide challenges.

“This was a fun way to engage our whole school across all grades. We loved the culture it created and the joy it brought,” said vice principal Michelle Davis. “We loved seeing students light up with excitement when they mastered a new skill or a new multiplication fact. The visuals that we used (the medals, the points board, and the multiplication strips) were big motivators.”

A daily math challenge question in school foyer encouraged students to think more deeply about math. Educators created questions for different grade groups, and students eagerly submitted their ideas. On average, students submitted 180 responses each day.

By the end of the event, students had earned a total of 2,594 medals.

“For me, the best part of the Fact Fluency Olympics was my class's increased excitement to do math,” said teacher Laurie Wiley.  “The students were motivated to get medallions and enjoyed seeing them posted on the board. It was a great way to practice facts - many of my students have now memorized their times tables up to 5.” 

Like schools across the district, Rosedale Traditional is building strong foundations in numeracy while supporting students to grow as confident, curious learners.