As a 5th grade teacher, the one thing that peeves me the most is when I find that the teachers below me are doing timed tests. They are a complete waste of time and do not measure math ability. I have primarily worked with the math curriculum "Bridges" which is a conceptual based curriculum. I have provided a lot of professional development to teachers using the curriculum and one of the things that we often discuss is the mismatch between computational fluency (what is taught through Bridges) and fluency as it is presented through timed tests. Computational fluency is not about how long it takes to figure out a problem, but whether students understand how the numbers work and can decompose and sort numbers in an efficient manner to get to the answer. For example, do they understand that 2 X 3 is 2 groups of 3 and can they visually represent this either in their head or with physical/visual models to get to an answer. We typically start by building a model, move to a color-coded visual, until students are able to do visualize in their head. A student wanting to solve 2 X 8 demonstrates computational fluency if they are able to use a strategy that is efficient, but not necessarily under time constraints. For example, can they decompose the number into 2 X 4 = 8 and 2 groups of 8 = 16. When it comes to other traditional algorithms, Bridges and many other conceptual math programs focus on building the the concept and letting the students discover traditional algorithms after playing with their own constructed algorithms and other scaffolded algorithms that are built around visual models. When students understand the concept thoroughly, the standard algorithms begin to make sense, rather than being a memorized process.