Year 3 - Learning Times Tables

mrcow

Does anyone know of any good online tools for learning times tables (2-12) or any tips on how to get them to really sink in.

I've tried everything I can think of (bar blutacking a copy of them up next to his bed - which is going to be my next step!)

Timez Attacks has been great and my son can do it no problem (has completed it as a game several times over now) but two days later he can't remember them.

It's the same with rote learning or me testing him, it's just not going in.

Writing them out is all well and good, but he's not learning to say the answers quickly, whch is what the school require (and what he should be able to do)

I've never once had a problem in teaching my son anything up to now - so I'm now having as much of a mental block as he is right now! At one point I really thought we'd cracked it, but I've just asked him a few - to be met with a completely blank face.

It's getting to the point where I'm thinking we're never going to get there!

I've just ordered a CD which plays them out as songs - hopefully it should help (£3.80 from Amazon)

Can anyone help?!

dizziblonde

As a stop-gap - teach ways he can work out ones he's not sure of (they WILL go in given time!):

2, 5, 10 are normally straight forward.
4x - work out 2x and double it
8x - as 4x and double it again
6x - work out 3x and double it
7x (this sounds daft but does work) - do ?x3 ?x4 and add them together
9x - the fingers trick - put hands out in front of you, put the digit down corresponding to the sum you're trying to work out, so your 3rd finger for 3x9 - you'll have 2 fingers stood up, your 3rd finger curled down, and then 7 fingers stood up - the left side fingers are your tens digit (2) the right side fingers are your units digit (7)... I'll admit to using this one to check sums out quickly to this day!
Change the order of the sum and use the tables you know - so 5x3 is the same as 3x5

It really is just practice - my mum used to quiz me on mine in the car and at random, just picking sums out of the air, not reciting things by rote. Also try emphasising just counting up in the multiple used, so going up in 3s... and keeping track of which one you're onto on your finger rather than having to go 1 times 3 is 3... all the way up to whatever one you're after.

You can also try bribery/incentives - one thing I've done in classes before is let kids nominate a chocolate bar they want for when they clear all their tables tests... if he's got something tangible to aim for it might spur him on as well.

Ultimately though he's still only year 3 and I'd anticipate times tables being something that's going to be an ongoing practice job for at least a couple of years until they're rock solid in there... heck I'm still wonky on 7s and 8s now!

Just keep at it - little and often, don't make it a battleground and they'll get there gradually and build up speed over time.

mrcow

Dizzi - that's great.

Will be trying all of that!

minimoneysaver

I love the 9x table trick. I didn't know that one. I just knew that all of the answers have to equal 9, eg 2x9=27 2+7=9 and so on.

tandraig

oh dear - the dreaded times tables. the difficulty I had with those! I could never ever memorise them! I so envied the other kids in the class who could recite them and even.........come up with an answer when asked random ones!
it was forty years before i found out why - I am number dyslexic! funny thing is most of my jobs have involved numbers - first in retail and even in bar work where you added up the price of a round of drinks in your head! later on I have even done courses at both college and university level involving statistical and quantative maths. but that was after the dyslexia was diagnosed.
not saying that the child IS number dyslexic, but does he sometimes/often make silly mistakes or think a 9 is a 6 or anything like that?
otherwise it could be a memory problem and the way that the tables are taught may not make sense to him.
when my kids were little Carol Vorderman brought out a program for teaching maths to kids and i bought her times tables on cassette tapes - they were set to music and my kids learned them very quickly - even i can remember some of it!

hbloomers

minimoneysaver wrote: »

I love the 9x table trick. I didn't know that one. I just knew that all of the answers have to equal 9, eg 2x9=27 2+7=9 and so on.

But 2x9 = 18, not 27.

The tables set to music worked for my little sister, though I think I'm still traumatised by the songs over 10 years later!

mazza111

We were forced to sing them in primary school many moons ago but it's the only way i've found that they sink in. Learning them due to repetition

Zazen999

I made my DSD cards; with the times [2x3=] on the front and the answer on the back; and as she learnt them we removed them from the pack. I also got her maths boxes, the same idea but she could move them about [still got them upstairs somewhere]....with the answer on the opposite face on little card cubes.

We would do them on long car journeys and the only way to shut us up was to give us enough answers.

I tried the fingers thing with 9s but she looked at me each time as if I was mental. So I gave up on that one.

dizziblonde

With the times tables to songs thing - the teacher who had the classroom next to me used to play a tape of these to her class and they were the most awful tunes in the world (you could seriously have flogged the tape to Jack Bauer to torture terrorists with)... my entire class cheered the day she came out of her room and announced the tape had snapped as it had driven them nuts (but you'd still see them sitting in their seats bouncing up and down in time to the music).

Sadly then she upgraded to a CD version!

tandraig

lol dizzi - but did they learn the tables easily, I sympathise as my kids learned from Carols tapes and the music drove me nuts too. but its amazing how quickly they learned the tables and the tapes were soon gathering dust!

cashless-cow

mrcow wrote: »

Does anyone know of any good online tools for learning times tables (2-12) or any tips on how to get them to really sink in.

I've tried everything I can think of (bar blutacking a copy of them up next to his bed - which is going to be my next step!)

Timez Attacks has been great and my son can do it no problem (has completed it as a game several times over now) but two days later he can't remember them.

It's the same with rote learning or me testing him, it's just not going in.

Writing them out is all well and good, but he's not learning to say the answers quickly, whch is what the school require (and what he should be able to do)

I've never once had a problem in teaching my son anything up to now - so I'm now having as much of a mental block as he is right now! At one point I really thought we'd cracked it, but I've just asked him a few - to be met with a completely blank face.

It's getting to the point where I'm thinking we're never going to get there!

I've just ordered a CD which plays them out as songs - hopefully it should help (£3.80 from Amazon)

Can anyone help?!

check out www.teachingtables.co.uk they have some games which may help....table mountain is particularly good as it revisits at random any incorrect answers or those which take longer to answer....thus giving the repetition which can help to 'stick' these tables into his long term memory. If you try out the evaluation copy, you can assess whether this is a way that might work for your son. I have used this game in school and usually the children forget that they are learning their tables and they love the certificates that you can print out to show their progress.

Another useful maths site is www.ictgames.com/numeracy

Don't know whether you walk to school or not?, but you could choose a different table each day to 'march' to, or if you have stairs in your house, you could make a game of reinforcing tables as you ascend/descend them.

For some children, movement can help memory retention and others will respond to more visual cues ie. colour in the 2 x table on a hundred square
(up to 12 x 2) then say the tables out loud pointing to each coloured square in turn, repeat with 4x, 8x and 12 pointing out the patterns of answers that are in both tables and that all answers are even numbers. Use the same pattern method for 3x, 6x and 9x. The 5x and 10x show very clear patterns which are easy to remember, and the 9x table can be learned by using the 'fingers' method that has already been mentioned on here.
Hope this helps