Primary School Says I am Totally Wrong About them Not Meeting My Son's Needs

missbiggles1

theoretica wrote: »

Nothing is wrong with that - but some people find it much harder than others do.

That's obviously true but I don't consider fiddling around on your fingers to be "learning/knowing your times table". If that's the sort of thing they encourage in primary schools these days, no wonder so many pupils are poor at arithmetic.

peachyprice

There's a far easier 'trick' with the 9 x tables than messing about with putting fingers up and down. The 10's go up, the units go down.

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theoretica

missbiggles1 wrote: »

That's obviously true but I don't consider fiddling around on your fingers to be "learning/knowing your times table". If that's the sort of thing they encourage in primary schools these days, no wonder so many pupils are poor at arithmetic.

Reading the posts in context, the finger method is not the school method, it is the one probably shown by the person the OP took her son to for assessment.

I am going to digress into abacus arithmetic. Using an abacus can be a fast and reliable method of doing arithmetic and is widely taught, though not in this country. Many people who have learnt to use one can do calculations when they don't have an abacus with them, by visualising the beads. Are fingers less respectable than beads? At least you always have them with you unlike a pencil and paper. At my primary school we all knew the 9 times table finger trick - the teachers didn't show it to us, other kids did.

liney

peachyprice wrote: »

There's a far easier 'trick' with the 9 x tables than messing about with putting fingers up and down. The 10's go up, the units go down.

09
18
27
etc

Except you have write it down to use this method. Spotting patterns and rhymes are great for helping the recall of times tables, but are no substitute for instant recall.




OP, you refused to have your son assessed for Educatational Health Care Plan (old statement) and are now complaining you are not getting the support you think he needs. How do they know what he needs if you refuse assessments?

missbiggles1

theoretica wrote: »

Reading the posts in context, the finger method is not the school method, it is the one probably shown by the person the OP took her son to for assessment.

I am going to digress into abacus arithmetic. Using an abacus can be a fast and reliable method of doing arithmetic and is widely taught, though not in this country. Many people who have learnt to use one can do calculations when they don't have an abacus with them, by visualising the beads. Are fingers less respectable than beads? At least you always have them with you unlike a pencil and paper. At my primary school we all knew the 9 times table finger trick - the teachers didn't show it to us, other kids did.

If you learn your times tables you need neither fingers, pencil and paper nor an abacus.

theoretica

missbiggles1 wrote: »

If you learn your times tables you need neither fingers, pencil and paper nor an abacus.

That is true, and I agree that most people can simply learn them, and it is useful to have done so. But not everyone is 'most people'. Is it better to get the right answer through a less than perfect method or the wrong/no answer with the best method? Making someone who is having trouble with memory struggle on without a crutch could be very demoralising.

Would you like to have to do all arithmetic in your life purely mentally? I wouldn't. Neither did Isaac Newton. Nor would I insist that other people turn to paper or calculator at the same level of complication or number of digits that I would. Our numerical system is in base 10 because we have 10 fingers.

susancs

missbiggles1 wrote: »

What's wrong with simply learning them by heart?

I totally agree with you. IMO the 9 times tables finger method that I assume the OP is refering to when she stated that her son was taught an easy 9 times tables method by the teacher she employed to do a learning assessment, was not a good method. The reason is that that method does not allow the division extension associated with learning the 9 times tables and other times tables e.g. if 9x5=45, this means that 45 divided by 5 = 9 and 45 divided by 9= 5.

There are so many good ways of learning the times tables off by heart to suit all different learning styles. Nether of my children have good memories, but one learnt all the times tables by singing along to a CD, over the school summer holidays before going into year 1. My younger child had a DVD with characters, plus had games we played at home. We also used an abacus, so they could understand the concept of times tables e.g. 4 rows of 5 is 20 in total and 20 divided between 4 is 5.

susancs

theoretica wrote: »

I am going to digress into abacus arithmetic. Using an abacus can be a fast and reliable method of doing arithmetic and is widely taught, though not in this country.

I think an abacus is a great visual way to help young children understand maths concepts. I used to use one with my children.

peachyprice

liney wrote: »

Except you have write it down to use this method. Spotting patterns and rhymes are great for helping the recall of times tables, but are no substitute for instant recall.

Of course you don't! I think most children can count from 1-10 and back again in their head.

liney

peachyprice wrote: »

Of course you don't! I think most children can count from 1-10 and back again in their head.

You'd be suprised! An even easier way to remember, if you can't just reel them off, is the answer always starters with 1 less then the mutiple and the digits add to 9, so 3x9 must start with a 2 therefore the other digit is 7.


If you can learn a song, you can learn times tables. Sing them.