Free 6th Grade FAST Math Practice: A Parent's Guide to the 160 Questions We Publish

A few weeks ago we published free FAST-style practice questions for every single 6th grade math benchmark. All 40 benchmarks, 160 questions total, each with instant answer checking and a worked explanation. No account, no email, no paywall halfway through.

Since then, the most common question from parents hasn't been "where is it" but "how should we actually use this?" Fair question. A pile of 160 questions isn't a plan. This post is the plan: how the free practice is organized, a simple weekly routine that takes about 20 minutes, and an honest answer about when free practice stops being enough.

What's Actually There

The starting point is the grade 6 practice hub, which lists all 40 benchmarks grouped into the same three reporting categories the FAST score report uses: Number Sense and Operations, Algebraic Reasoning, and Geometric Reasoning with Data and Probability.

Each benchmark gets its own page with four things on it:

• A plain-English explanation of what the benchmark actually covers
• How the FAST typically tests it (which question formats to expect)
• The specific skills a student needs
• Four real questions from our bank with instant checking and explanations

The questions come straight from the same bank our paying families use. They aren't warm-up questions or teasers. Some are genuinely hard, because the FAST is genuinely hard.

The 20-Minute Weekly Routine

Here's the routine I'd run with a rising 7th grader this summer. It assumes one sitting a week. Twice a week is better, but one consistent session beats two aspirational ones.

1. Pick one benchmark, not one category. "Fractions this week" is too broad. "Dividing fractions" is one page and four questions. Small enough to finish, specific enough to matter.
2. Have your child work all four questions out loud. The talking is the point. You'll hear exactly where the reasoning goes sideways, which no score report will ever show you.
3. Read the explanation together on anything missed. Every question has a step-by-step explanation. The habit of reading explanations after a miss is worth more than the practice itself.
4. Log it somewhere. A sticky note on the fridge with the benchmark code and a checkmark or an X. After six weeks you have your own reporting category breakdown, built from direct observation.

Where to start? If you have the spring score report, start in the reporting category that came back weakest (our guide to FAST scores and levels explains how to read it). If you don't, start with the benchmarks that trip up the most students, which we covered in last week's post on the six most-missed benchmarks. Fraction division and integer subtraction alone account for a disproportionate share of lost points.

A few good single-benchmark starting points if you just want to dive in: unit rates (the better-buy problems that show up constantly), converting between fractions, decimals, and percents (a skill every other benchmark quietly depends on), and plotting points on the coordinate plane (quick wins that build confidence).

Why Summer Practice at All?

Because math is the subject summer hits hardest. The research puts average summer math loss at one to two months of learning, with middle schoolers losing more than younger kids. We went through the evidence in detail in our summer slide post, but the practical takeaway is simple: 20 to 30 minutes a week is enough to hold the line for a student who ended the year on grade level.

When Free Practice Isn't Enough

I'll be straight about the limits, since I built both the free pages and the paid product. The free practice is four questions per benchmark. That's enough to find out whether your child struggles with a skill. It's not enough to fix the struggle, because fixing takes repetition with fresh problems, and it's not enough to tell you which of the 40 benchmarks to prioritize without you doing the detective work yourself.

The paid version of Algebro handles both: a 20-minute diagnostic that maps all the gaps at once, a study plan that orders the work, 100+ questions per benchmark so practice never repeats, and an AI tutor for the "wait, why?" moments when you're not in the room. It's $10 a month for parents with a 7-day free trial, and you can also poke around the interactive demo first without signing up for anything.

But if the budget is zero this summer, use the free pages with the routine above and you'll be ahead of the vast majority of families. That's why we published them.