I'm fluent.

A lot of maths seems to do with fluency. I think that's having those key facts which can just trip off the tip of your tongue when you need them to. It's being able to move seamlessly between different contexts and representations of maths.

There is a difference between learning 'by rote' and 'a meaningful known fact'. But for some children it might actually be better to just learn by rote and then get the understanding later.

We looked at the value of maths talk and I read more about that in the Nrich article.