When I was in primary school, I had this Ghanaian lesson teacher who would line us up at this group lesson and ask us to recite our times tables and we’d go one after the other and start from 2 times 1 all the way to 12 times 12. Once we miss any fact, we would get whooped.
I remember I used to dread going for lessons but because of the fear of Mr A, I learnt my times tables by ”fire by force” as we say these days. Did it help me in the future? YES
Will I use this method for my biological children or the children I teach? No
Having garnered a wealth of experience from teaching Maths to Primary school pupils, I belong to the school of thought that believes a child should know their times tables by heart. Of course we teach them that multiplication is repeated addition and they can skip count in that number to get their time tables or learn a song. But you see at the end of the day if a child needs to start reciting 8 times 1 from the beginning just to give an answer to 8 times 8 then there’s a problem. The child will end up getting frustrated when trying to solve a long division problem or find factor pairs of numbers.
So what has worked for me? And how have I been able to make my learners memorise their times tables without the famous chanting of tables every morning. The answer is this really great website I discovered a couple of years ago called:mathsisfun.com
On this site, is a wonderful app called: math trainer. click here to view it. I cannot stop raving about this app. It does exactly what it says, it trains the brain to remember. At every parents’ seminar I have spoken at, I have not stopped preaching the gospel of math trainer because it is absolutely brilliant.
Math trainer encourages the child not to count but to train themselves to remember. This works in unison with the constant theme in my classroom- resilience. Remember that ‘concentration’ game we played while growing up? Math trainer is quite similar. The app allows you to choose which facts you want to practise and then plays the same question over and over again, this way a child is bound to remember.
I have won so many victories over times tables with using maths trainer in my classroom that I just had to share.
In closing, I do not encourage rote chanting of the times tables but I do believe that times tables should be known by heart and this is one way to get it sorted.
So let me hear your thoughts in the comments section. I’d also like to hear what methods have worked for you in your classroom or at home as a parent.
Photo credit: paperzip.co.uk
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