Num Drill for teachers
Num Drill is a free math-fact practice tool that works in a classroom without accounts, installs, or a purchase order. A 10-question quiz takes a fluent student about 60–90 seconds, which makes it a workable bell-ringer or warm-up rather than something that eats a lesson. It runs in any modern browser, including school Chromebooks.
It is deliberately narrow: Num Drill drills facts so they become automatic. It does not teach concepts. If your students are meeting a topic for the first time, teach it first — then use this for the fluency reps.
What it covers
Seven operations — addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, percentages, pre-algebra, and fractions — each with six progressive levels. The levels run a little ahead of typical U.S. pacing, so a student working above grade level has somewhere to go. Rough grade fit is 2nd through 6th.
Set up a class in about three minutes
There are no student accounts to create and no roster to import. Each student gets a local profile — a name and an emoji — that lives in that browser’s storage.
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Open the profile creator
Go straight to the create-profile screen with this link:
Add one profile per student who will use that device. Names can be first-name-only or initials — whatever your school prefers.
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Students tap their own name to switch
The profile pill at the top of the screen switches everything — weak-fact tracking, personal bests, mastery grid — instantly. No password, no sign-in step.
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Start practising
From the home screen a student picks an operation and level and goes. Scores accumulate per profile on that device.
The 10-minute warm-up routine
The evidence on math-fact fluency points the same way as the evidence on most retrieval practice: short and frequent beats long and occasional. Ten minutes most days does more than an hour on Friday. A workable shape:
| Minutes | What happens |
|---|---|
| 0–1 | Students open their profile and pick the operation you name. |
| 1–7 | Three or four 10-question quizzes at a level they can finish confidently. |
| 7–10 | Students look at which facts they missed and re-run one quiz. |
The adaptive weighting surfaces missed facts more often on later quizzes, so the re-run is not just repetition — it targets the wedge facts that student personally keeps dropping. More on the reasoning behind this on our methodology page, and a longer worked version in the 10-minute routine post. There is also a classroom-specific version: how to run a 10-minute math warm-up in class, which covers handling a wide spread of levels and the shared-device pitfalls.
When students race through a quiz
A quiz clicked through without thinking is no practice at all, so the app pushes back. A blank answer is refused (“Type an answer first”). Three answers in a row in under 0.8 seconds, faster than anyone can work a fact out, pause the quiz for three seconds with a “slow down” message. And a student’s results link shows a Rushed badge when half or more of the answers came in under 0.8 seconds, so a score built on guesses is easy to spot when you open it. Mad Minute timed tests are exempt, since speed is the point there.
Linking it from Canvas, Google Classroom, or Schoology
Teachers already do this, so here are the links that behave predictably when you paste them into an assignment or a course page. To post one to Google Classroom in two clicks, use the link maker below.
| Link | What it does |
|---|---|
| The assignment link. Starts that exact drill — here multiplication, level 3 — the moment a student opens it. It works whether or not they already have a profile, and when they do have one the quiz counts towards their own stats. | |
| Starts a guest quiz immediately — but only for a student who has no profile on that device yet. A student who already has a profile lands on their home screen instead, which is their quiz-start screen anyway. | |
| Opens the create-profile box. This is the one to use at the start of the year or when a new student joins. | |
| The printable worksheet pack — useful when you want the link to survive a day without devices. |
Building an assignment link
Take numdrill.com/app/#quiz and add the skill and level you want:
numdrill.com/app/#quiz?skill=mul&level=3&count=20| Part | Values |
|---|---|
skill |
add, sub, mul,
div, pct, alg, frc.
The whole word works too, so skill=multiplication and
skill=fractions are both fine. |
level |
1 to 6. Level 1 is the gentlest;
for multiplication, level 2 is the 1–10 tables and level 3 the
full 1–12 tables. |
count |
Optional. How many questions, from 1 to 200. Leave it out and students get 10. |
A few worked examples you can paste straight into an assignment:
- Times tables 1–10
- 20 addition facts
- Fractions with unlike denominators
If you mistype a link, the student sees a plain-English message saying what was wrong and can still pick a skill and level themselves — they never get silently dropped into the wrong drill. Worth clicking your own link once before you post it.
Printables for sub plans, centres, and homework
Every worksheet in the pack is a free PDF with the answer key on page 2, so a substitute or a parent can mark it without you. There are 104 sheets — addition and subtraction facts, times tables 2–12, division, fractions, percentages, multiplication and hundreds charts (filled and blank), place value charts, coordinate planes, number lines, and order-of-operations practice with a PEMDAS reference poster. For December there are Christmas math worksheets too: ornament trees, color by number and word problems.
Browse them on the printable worksheets page. No email address, no sign-up wall, no watermark.
Student privacy
Schools have to ask this before anything else, so here is the specific answer rather than a reassuring adjective.
What stays on the device
- Profile names and emojis
- Per-student progress, personal bests, and the mastery grid
- Which facts a student keeps missing
What reaches our server
- Completed quiz results — the questions, the answers given, and timing — so we can grade and store score history
- The requesting IP address and browser user-agent, logged for abuse prevention
We do not ask for or collect student emails, addresses, birthdates, or parent contact information, and there is no account to create. The only identifier attached to a result is whatever display name a student typed into their local profile, which is why first-name-or-initials is a reasonable classroom convention.
Num Drill is free, has no paid tier, and shows no advertising. For the full data description, including the analytics and tag-manager scripts the site itself loads, see the parents and privacy page. If your district needs something specific in writing for a review, the fastest route is to send us the question directly.
What Num Drill does not do
Being clear about this saves you evaluating it for a job it will not do:
- No gradebook or teacher dashboard. Scores live on the student’s device. You cannot see a class view from your own machine.
- No roster sync, no SSO, no Clever or ClassLink. Profiles are created by hand, per device.
- No instruction. No lessons, videos, or worked explanations — it assumes the concept has been taught.
- No completion tracking. An assignment link sets the drill, but nothing reports back to you that a student did it.
What it does do is remove every barrier between a student and a minute of focused retrieval practice: no login, no load screen, no ads, no cost.
Common questions
Do students need accounts or logins to use Num Drill?
No. There are no student accounts, passwords, or email addresses. Each student creates a local profile — a name and an emoji — that is stored in that browser on that device, and taps their own name to switch. Nothing to provision, and nothing for a student to forget.
Does Num Drill work on school Chromebooks and iPads?
Yes. It runs in any modern browser with no install and no extension. Chromebooks are a common way our classroom users reach it. On a shared iPad, several students can each have their own profile on the same device and switch between them by tapping the profile pill.
What student data does Num Drill collect?
Profile names, per-student progress, personal bests, and weak-fact tracking stay in the browser's local storage on the device and are never copied to our server. Completed quiz results — the questions, the answers given, and timing — are sent to our server so they can be graded and stored as score history, and we log the requesting IP address and user-agent for abuse prevention. We do not collect student emails, addresses, birthdates, or parent contact details.
Can I see my students' scores in a teacher dashboard or gradebook?
No. Score history lives on the student's own device, so there is no class view, gradebook export, or teacher account. Num Drill is built for fluency reps during a warm-up, not for assessment reporting. If you need a record, the printable worksheets have answer keys and can be marked on paper.
Is Num Drill really free for classroom use?
Yes. It is free with no paid tier, no premium upgrade, no pay-to-unlock-levels mechanic, and no subscription, and it shows no advertising. The printable worksheet pack is also free with no email sign-up wall. There is nothing to purchase and no quote to request.
How do I fit Num Drill into a 10-minute warm-up?
Give students one minute to open their profile and pick the operation you name, six minutes to run three or four 10-question quizzes at a level they can finish confidently, and the last three minutes to look at missed facts and re-run one quiz. Short and frequent beats long and occasional: ten minutes most days outperforms an hour once a week.
Can I link a specific skill or level from Canvas or Google Classroom?
Yes. Add the skill and level to the quiz link: numdrill.com/app/#quiz?skill=mul&level=3 starts multiplication at level 3 as soon as the student opens it. Skills are add, sub, mul, div, pct, alg and frc (the full words such as skill=multiplication also work), levels run 1 to 6, and an optional count=20 sets the number of questions, which otherwise defaults to 10. The link works whether or not the student already has a profile, and when they do the quiz counts towards their own stats. A mistyped link shows the student a plain-English explanation rather than starting the wrong drill.
Quick links: printable worksheets · multiplication chart · number line · methodology & research · for parents · FAQ
Try it the way your students will
One quiz takes about a minute and needs no account. That is the whole evaluation.
Start a quiz