“…By reducing the demand on working memory, fluent recall of basic facts enables students to devote more attention to the overall purpose of a mathematics problem (Burns, Kanive, & DeGrande, 2012;Burns et al, 2016;Neill, 2008;Sweller, Ayres, & Kalyuga, 2011), which facilitates better understanding (Gross, Duhon, Shutte, & Rowland, 2016). Compared to their less fluent peers, students who are fluent with the recall of basic facts also enjoy more opportunities to respond to complex mathematics tasks (McCallum, Skinner, Turner, & Saecker, 2006), show an increased willingness to exert effort, and increased student motivation (Codding, Chanlannetta, Palmer, & Lukito, 2009). Despite the importance of fluent basic facts recall, many students find learning multiplication facts difficult (Steel & Funnell, 2001;Tait-McCutcheon, Drake, & Sherley, 2011), and as the mathematics curriculum increases in complexity, those less fluent are more likely to fall further behind their peers; a phenomenon commonly referred to as the Matthew effect (Merton, 1968).…”