Tables

I see children nowadays who can very competently count on in 3s and 7s etc but do not know their tables and cannot recall 4x 7 for example. You are always going to need your tables whether in everyday life or as an advanced mathematician. The only way is to recite them in a rhythmic pattern. If you sing them you need a quick rather than a slow tune. It can also be helpful to march around you say these rhythmically.

There are plenty of games to help online with learning the individual tables. These mix up and fire questions at random for rapid recall.. You can work on individual tables or all of them mixed together. One real type game which has different levels and also is free ,interesting,and speeds you up is Timez attack. From a multiplication chart it can be seen that most of the answers in the tables are even numbers-you only get an odd number when 2 odd numbers are multiplied together. (Even number tables all have even number answers; odd number tables go odd ,even ,odd even. Any multiplication with one even number has an even answer.) There are tricks with the different tables: :for the 5s the answers end in 0 for even numbers and 5 for odd numbers,so they go 5,0,5,0,5,0. For the 9s -the answers start with one less -thus 8 nines are seventy something,4 nines are thirty something etc The numbers in the answer always adds up to 9. You can also put up your ten fingers and put down the finger you are multiplying by-for example third finger for 3 nines and read those on the left as tens giving twenty and those on the right as units giving twenty seven. The 11s is easy 11,22,33,44,etc

It should be necessary to know the 12 times table for everyday use in the hours in several days or the months in several years.

Tables questions and number bonds such as adding to 20 or taking away can be written on cards. These can be worked through by the child who turns them over to see the sum displayed again with the answer. This is away of weeding out the unknown facts. It is also necessary to test them the other way round such as how many 9s in 36 etc. Another way is to have cards with the 3 numbers eg 7x 8= 56 written

8 56 3

and to cover each one and test.