Brighter Futures – August 2020

MY CHILD DOESN’T KNOW THEIR TIMES TABLES!

Who is Responsible? – Teacher? Parent? Child?

Well actually, these days, I believe it is all three…Forty years ago, when I was at school, we started each day chanting our times tables and then did exercises that challenged us to answer correctly as many questions as possible in a set time. It was how it was done. We had no choice. The consequences for not learning them were quite severe in some cases.

Christine Hawkins
Owner KMEC Hunter

But, things have changed…

Today these methods are frowned upon and called ‘old fashioned’.

Also, what is accepted now will be different tomorrow. Teaching strategies will always change with the times as we search for better ways to create real learning.

However, I am seeing more and more children each day unable to automatically recall their tables. Sadly, all too often I hear “My child doesn’t know their times tables and they’re off to high school next year.”

The only way I can see it working in today’s environment is to have teachers responsible for teaching children how multiplication tables work and why they are REEEALLY important. With this understanding the children can then be responsible for learning them with the help of their parents. Together with this teaching and learning your child will truly know their Times Tables.

I can hear you groaning now, “I just don’t have the time or patience to do that!”

Well, from seeing over 1000 children come through our centres over the years, I have found the best way to learn the Times Tables is constant repetition until it embeds into their long term memory; this means at school and at home until it sinks in.

Ideally, two five-minute sessions a day for 21 days will commit each of the times tables to memory. Once done your child’s life will be so much easier with other parts of Maths like division, fractions, and decimals. If we could convince them to do this, the memory would be there FOREVER!

So, truly KNOWING times table will come as a result of the effort put in by all involved, where teachers TEACH them and children LEARN them.

Put simply: TEACH + LEARN = KNOW

We have a plan at Kip McGrath to help children learn their times tables and I have some suggestions for things you can do at home to speed up the process.

To see these ideas and a list of Apps I recommend, please go to:
https://englishandmathstutors.com.au/teacher-tips/strategies-memorising-times-tables/