How to Learn Your Times Tables
So in my last post I promised some advice on how to learn your times tables. For those of you wondering the way to get to Carnegie Hall is practice, practice, practice! (its a musician joke)
The advice is true for learning any new life skill and times tables are no different. Think of it as learning a new (simple) language. You will need to set aside some time to learning your tables, preferably every day at first and then maybe once a week, once a fortnight, once a month until you know them. It doesn't have to be a long time, 5-10 minutes should be enough, but it does have to be regular and this is where most of us struggle with learning a new skill or habit.
There are plenty of free apps around to help and if your Google "Table Trees" you will find a simple but effective website to practise on. The best way to schedule regular practice is to link it to something you do every day as research has shown that this is the easiest way to embed a new habit. So it could be 10 minutes straight after dinner, just before a favourite TV programme, just before going to bed or straight after breakfast.
For learners who enjoy competitive sports a set of flash cards with multiplications on one side and divisions on the other can be used to race the clock with times recorded on a chart to show progress. Examples of cards would be Side 1: 8 x 9 / Side 2: 72 ÷ 8 The cards can be shuffled each time and different sides presented as the learner gains confidence. For those who find time pressure causes their mind to go blank a simple scoring system of how many were right can give gentler encouragement.
Linking multiplication and division together from the start can prevent learners from thinking they are rubbish at division. If you know that 8 x 9 = 72 then you also know that 72 ÷ 8 = 9 and that 72 ÷ 9 = 8. It's the mathematical equivalent of a BOGOF (except you get 2 free or 3 if you count 9 x 8 = 72) but this is not always explicitly explained to learners in the early stages of learning their tables.
Another option is to have the answers to the tables on cards and ask the learner to pick out all the cards in say the 8 times tables. This helps with faster table recognition and can be especially useful for factorising in algebra and simplifying fractions.
Giving learners a number that is in several tables and asking them how many multiplications they can come up with also embeds the tables. For example 24: 1 x 24, 2 x 12, 3 x 8, 4 x 6.
There is no magic wand for learning tables. It is a life skill and therefore just like learning to kick a penalty, to swim, to play the piano or to speak Spanish it takes practice, practice, practice.
