Times Tables expectations - too high?

[UndertheCedartree]

My DD school don't follow the NC but seem to follow it (at least in part) for Times Tables - so Y2 learned the 2, 5 and 10 times tables and this year (Y3) they are learning 3, 4 and 8. By the end of Y4 they should know them all by heart including division facts. Is this just me or does this seem a lot? I know I only learnt my Times Tables in Y5 and 6 (so hadn't even started by the time they are meant to know them all now!) and Division was in Secondary school.

I know my DD is not at the expected NC level (I'm not sure what the school expects but will find out at the next parent/teacher meeting). So my DD is coming up for 8. She knows the 10× table off by heart and can do Division facts. 2x table she can recite in order. 5x table - she can count in 5s. And that's it basically. Much more than I could do at her age and I did really well at school. She understands Multiplication and can work out a sum if she has time to count. Is she very behind?

By the end of year 4 ds had to know them all with a five second recall. This was 9 years ago. Seems to be the norm round here to know them off by heart by the time they move to middle school.

You might find your child surprises you. My daughter is in Year 4 and has always been average but she uses time table rockstars and now knows all times tables up to 12 - she can answer them in 1.5 seconds or something ridiculous like that 😂like all of a sudden something has clicked and she's now amazing at them!

I just know that by age 11 my children were doing algebra and geometry. Times tables, addition/division and fractions were all completed by age 8.

So your time scale seems backwards? Or slow? To me. Not sure of right word.

Don't panic. Your daughter still has a few years to learn them all. My son is in year 6 now and he knows them. What worked for us was to pick 10 random multiplications (4x6, 7x 3 etc) and then go over and over them at bedtime. He took a couple of weeks to know them, then we picked another 10 and went over the previous ones too. If he didn't remember 6 x 4, then we flipped it to 4 x6 and he may have known that one. Silly sayings helped too, to help remember them. You do have to persevere!! Still don't know why they don't just spend 10 mins ever morning in school chanting them...

@Hercwasonaroll I definitely agree about it making things faster, and not forgetting the actual problem - but it’s confidence too.

My Y6 had a friend over and they did some homework together with me. I was babysitting hence the homework, not a normal play date! They had been given some 2019 SATS Arithmetic paper questions, one was:

5/6 x 540 = ?

My daughter instantly could see that 9 was going to be involved here somewhere, because she sees a 6 and 54, and thinks 9.
So even before starting any calculations she was all “dive in, I’ll be able to do this!” whilst her friend eyed it with a “say what now?” suspicion and looked worried. Her friend is equally able, if not moreso - but she doesn’t have the times table recall.

My granddaughter is 8 and knows all her tables up to 12 (and division), but she is a bright spark and loves to do well at school. Her school, a local C of E village primary, has very high academic expectations. There will be children in her class who struggle with basic addition and multiplication, I'm sure, but may be good at football or athletics or singing.

My parents left school at 14 and worked in factories all their lives and neither were academic at all, but there's one thing they did know thoroughly and that was their times tables, so they never struggled with everyday household maths problems like what size curtains to buy etc. They achieved this by regular repetition and daily mental maths problems. It can be done by almost every school child but they need encouragement at home too and not be led to believe it's a chore to be endured. If every parent showed great enthusiasm for all things school related instead of complaining (even if it's just an act for their kids' sake) then society would be a lot better in general!!

I'm a year 6 teacher and I constantly tell pupils and parents that the single most important thing they can do to help with maths (and the dreaded SATs) is to have rapid recall of multiplication facts. If they have this, then their brain will make connections and links much more quickly and they will tackle questions much more quickly.

DD2 moved to an American school one term into year four/third grade. She was expected to know all of her tables up to 12 times by then.

I think lots of schools really push tables now, and it is difficult for children who find them tricky.

My child is in year two. He has already done 2,5,10 and is now working of the divisions on these. After Easter, he will go onto 3 & 4. From the second week of studying them, he has done a weekly ‘challenge’, where they have to try to answer 40 questions in three minutes. It’s super competitive and some get really upset that they can’t achieve it every week.

At my kids school they are expected to know the tables and division facts by end of Yr 4.

What completely confuses me is that they seem to have taught them to count up in multiples rather than saying "one times 7 is 7, two times seven is fourteen" etc, so they now have no idea what 7 divided by 4 is (which I assume is what a division fact is?!). Though maybe that's not a division fact.

It all seems very differently when I was at school. Which is exactly what my mum used to say to me when I was at school .....

I don't think you are being unreasonable (it appears I'm in the minority bigtime). I do think you don't get how maths is valued and taught now. Maths education has come on hugely since I (who could do maths) and my sister (who didn't get it ) went to school in the (some decades ago timeframe). If your experience was "there are people who can't do maths" whilst looking down on "people who can't write" then be grateful that we've worked out that we can in fact teach numeracy across the ability range since then. Expecting kids who learned the 4x table to be able to do the 8x table is really not a stretch.

I would also say, OP, that it is really rare for academy primary schools not to follow the NC in Maths (and English), however free and easy they are with the remainder of the curriculum.

As academies are not exempt from Y2 and Y6 SATs, nor the Y4 Times Table check or Y1 Phonics checks (AFAIK), it is to the school's advantage to follow the NC in these subjects.

I think that, if you ckeck the 2014 NC curriculum compared with what your child is doing in Maths, you could well find that they are closer than you might expect - however wildly different what they do in history or geography or whatever are from the NC.

Year 1 son knows his 2, 3, 5 and 10 times tables already. He's pretty good with numbers though. The earlier they learn them the better as they become confident using them and becomes second nature.

I ended my teaching in an independent school, but we followed NC guidelines, and all tables up to 12x12 fluently was certainly the expectation. Partly because of what's coming in Yrs 5&6, eg reducing fractions to simplest terms, area, volume and the like, where simply knowing the facts helps to maintain momentum when solving other problems. If you have to stop to painstakingly work out 6 times 7, it's possible that you've forgotten why you were making that step by the time you get to 42 (even if it is the answer to life, the universe and everything!)
When my pupils complained, I would tell them how lucky they were; I had to learn 14x and 16x as well, for weights and measures (pre-metric child.....) At age 7, the 1st Year Junior, now Yr3, I can remember the facts for the 7x table pinned up round the kitchen as my DM tested me; it was the one I found really hard to learn. Bog standard state primary, decades before the National Curriculum was even thought of.
If it's still in print, I can recommend a book called "Calculated Colouring" , if she enjoys colouring in. It starts with very simple times tables, and if all the facts are found correctly, you end up with a picture.

@MummySharkDooDoo - ah, good to hear!
@PlanDeRaccordement - the NC plan is all times tables to be known by Y4 (8-9). Algebra and geometry would be in the Year 6 SATS so would be done by Year 5 (9-10) or earlier, I would imagine.

Adding to @Caaarrrl comment, we played a game with our kids on the trampoline we had. Stand a distance away and call out a multiplication fact, then throw the ball (catchably!) and expect an answer before the catch.

Worked with us - they demanded the game when I hated going out to play! - and doesn't need a Trampoline tbh. Does require parents to know their times tables because you will be found out :(

@quizqueen - I'm very academic so very enthusiastic about all the school work - except the creative projects that often stump me! Luckily DD's dad was able to step in and make a model volcano with her this weekend!

Seems reasonable to me. The majority of children at my DS school have known them up to 12x12 including division facts since year 3. A few minutes a night and they'll soon be learnt.

We were taught our tables by chanting every morning, from aged 5. I've heard all the arguments about if you don't understand them what's the point? All I can say is, I'm 70. I probably use them at least once a day. I might not have understood them at first, but understanding soon came, and I still think the way we were taught them was good. Personally, I think that children's brains are amazing things, and can cope with a lot more than you realise.
When my granddaughter was six, she was withdrawn from school, her confidence smashed as the teacher had implied that she wasn't very bright. The first thing my son did was to teach her how to do long (very long) division. We're talking things like 958746328 divided by 45. He told her that she was very clever so he was going to show her how to do some maths that a lot of adults couldn't do. Once she had done that first sum, he showed her that the age appropriate work she'd found difficult was not beyond her capabilities. The problem had been her teacher, not her.

OP: Algebra - formal use of x - is taught in Y6.

However, 'pre-algebra' or 'empty box' problems are taught from the very earliest Maths. When a Y1 child is given a question that says 5 + [empty box] = 7, and has to fill in the empty box, that's algebra. the only change in Y6 is the formal teaching of '2a' meaning 'two multiplied by a' and the replacement of empty boxes by letters.

It depends what you mean by geometry as to when that is taught - from shape names in Y1 up to finding missing angles in Y6. Have a look at NC programme of study for Maths

I am in my 50s, and we were expected to know all our times tables up to 12 times table by the time we were 8/9 (what used to be second year juniors, not sure what the years are now, possibly year 4?). There was a times table test every day where the 'winners' got a sweet.

@HappyAsASandboy - yes, that's what a 'division fact' is! I find the terminology so different too! At my DD's school they have a process of learning them. Bronze level is counting in multiples, Silver is being able to recite the times table in order and Gold is being able to answer random multiplication questions on the times table. Platimum is answering multiplication and division fact questions. So maybe they are just learning the first part.

'It frees up so much time (and gives confidence!) to concentrate on new ideas in maths'

^^This. It can be tedious getting to revise it over and over again but it really is worth it.

I sometimes think maths facts - like number bonds and times tables - are a bit like the phoneme-grapheme correspondences in reading.

You can say 'but it's rote learning, not understanding' to say that 'the sound ' can be made by the digraphs ai, ay, a_e etc' .... but it sure helps when it comes to reading to just know them, rather than have to work them out individually every time.

As others have said, applications such as fractions (and obviously being able to convert them to decimals and percentages), adding fractions and finding the mixed number equivalents of the improper fraction answers, finding perimeters of polygons, finding compound area etc etc are all SO much easier when the muliplication / division steps require no specific thought, and the thought can be focused on the application to the problem in hand.

(All the above examples are things that your DD will be doing in a couple of years' time. I do have a few pupils who still need to 'think about', rather than recall, the times table steps in such calculations, and it makes them SOOOO much more likely to lose track of what they are aiming for in the real problem)