Does your student really need to learn all the times tables facts from scratch? How can you support students who are struggling to learn their times tables?
If you have a student who is struggling, or feels that they are struggling with learning their times tables, then one quick way to support them and boost their confidence is to identify which facts they actually need to learn by eliminating those that they already know.
During the Victorian period students had to rote learn 165 tables facts from 0 x 1 to 12 x 12. Schools these days however, concentrate mainly on the 0x to 10x tables ignoring the 11x and 12x facts, so that in effect takes away 44 facts to start with.
When looking at the 0x to the 10x tables inclusively we see that they contain 121 different facts e.g. 6 x 2 = 12. However it is often the case that quite a few of these facts are already familiar. A good place to start therefore is to identify the facts that you do know and those that your student is not sure of or does not know.
Multiplication can be carried out in any order so for each fact you learn you actually learn two facts; a kind of buy one fact get one free! By ensuring that students recognise this essential fact you can eliminate the need to learn 55 facts which will leave 66 facts for students to learn.
If your student knows that the rule for the 0x table is that the answer is always 0 then you have eliminated 11 facts to get the 55 sheets.
The rule for table-1x is that the response does not change, is the number you started with, for example, 6 x 1 = 6 This has a further 10 events so that only 45 disposed to learn.
The table is 10 times easier to learn and retain, move the digits one position to the left and add a zero (0) 70 as a placeholder for example, 7 x 10 = This could be best illustrated by a board of lay or monetary value , allowing students to see the value of positionthe figures. This is taken care of another 9 and made only 36 left.
If you skip count by twos, and you know who have just deleted the numbers in multiples of two, then leave a further 9 27 facts to learn.
What other facts have to know your students? Think of the table 5 times. All answers end in 5 or 0 alternately. Multiplying by 5 the number is an odd product to 5, while multiplying 5 by an even number is a product of the ending zero (0). This is alsoanother 9 facts taken care of and leaves only 18 more to learn.
Now sit and list any other facts not already accounted for and then you will have an idea of exactly which facts are left to be learned.
Trickier facts such as 7 x 8 = 56 can be learned with the use of rhymes such as, '5 6 7 8, 56 is 7 times 8'.
Learning times tables does not have to be problematic or stressful. Simply check what your student knows already before you start. It will give him a real boost in confidence and a great place to start.
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