Here is something that will help your child with their Times Tables…

Times Table Charts are commonly used, but did you know they can be used to help with another 4 things?

In this short video I shall explain 5 different ways the humble Times Table Charts can be used to help with your maths.

Your child will be so amazed at how useful this chart is they will have it with them whenever they are doing some maths.

Teaching Times Tables has Changed

Forty years ago, when I was at school, we started each day chanting and doing exercises that helped us memorise our times tables. It was how it was done. We had no choice. The consequences for not learning them were quite severe in some cases.

But, things have changed…Teaching strategies change with the times as they search for better ways to create real learning. Sadly though, we see many children who enter high school without knowing their times tables by heart.

Now the thing is, knowing times tables makes other maths, like fractions and decimals, quicker and easier. But not only this, if a child knows their Times Tables off by heart, they can devote 100% of their energy solving the current maths problem – rather than worrying if their multiplication is correct.

Also, children rely far too heavily on calculators and computers to do the thinking for them today.  Answers from a calculator can very easily be wrong, just from hitting the incorrect key. Quite often these are accepted without question as children have no other way of checking it. Knowing their Tables enables quick estimations to be made to ensure the answers they are getting makes sense.

The best way to learn the Times Tables is constant repetition until it embeds into long-term memory. The graph below shows how quickly we forget.

If you spend two, five-minute sessions a day, memorising each of the times tables until they can be recalled automatically and review them often, they will be remembered forever. There are apps available to help make this process fun. Any activity, which keeps a record of progress and rewards achievement, will help greatly. With focused effort it will happen. The key is finding the method and motivation, which will work best, for your child.