What’s your memory of learning times tables?
Mine is this: the whole class chanting the tables from’1 times 2 is 2’ to ’12 times 12 is 144’ whilst the teacher wrote the ‘sums’ for the day on the blackboard – yes, I am that old! If we made a mistake, then we had to start from the beginning. Usually, we hadn’t finished chanting by the time the teacher had finished writing, The only other thing I recall is a giant handwritten Multiplication Square next to the blackboard – we really shouldn’t have made any mistakes at all!
How times have changed – now we have online resources; games; songs; activities and more yet learning multiplication facts is still a bug bear. I wonder why that is?
Tackling this issue can take time, Children, not having a secure grasp of the facts by Y6, often, have reached the conclusion that they can’t ‘do Maths’. Yet it is just their lack of factual knowledge that stands in their way, but the impact on their confidence is massive. The MTC in Y4 has its issues but at least it redirects the focus of learning these facts to the point where children are learning the multiplication concepts, marrying the two together.
Learning by rote, as I did, has meant that the facts are indelibly inked in my memory but I had zero understanding of the concepts behind multiplication until I became a tracher. I could trot out the process to get the correct answer in long multiplication but, again, I had no idea why I was doing each stage of the process.
Today’s teaching of multiplication is a universe away from that and the debate rages on – understanding before procedure or procedure before understanding? However, without times table knowledge it’s a moot point. Multiplication facts are vital not just for completing multiplication and division calculations. But in many other areas of Maths too. Without these crucial facts at their fingertips fractions; area; ratio are even harder to comprehend.
So times tables need to be taught; learnt and rehearsed often.
KS2Gems offers a range of resources to support learning times table facts. Free samples can be found here:
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