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?

we used to practise in the car- so 10 mins on way to school etc. Makes it easier to find the time and in small sessions.

DS has ASD, dyslexia and dyspraxia. Rote patterns are difficult for him to retain and learn. He's great at calculating and is overall very strong at maths, but for children like him, a specific times table test is less informative and useful than a chocolate teapot (at least melted chocolate tastes nice ).

He does times table rockstars, but he just can't process rapidly enough to enjoy the competition, and his results are very inconsistent because so many random things can affect his coping level every day. He just doesn't progress in the nice, neat linear way that the education system expects all children to progress (not that so many of them do anyway because they are people with complex lives and varied needs, not automatons performing to algorithms). It's difficult to do much school work at home as in his mind, school belongs in school and by the time he gets home, he's burned out after a day of masking and very vulnerable to melting down when faced with some of his nemisis tasks.

Last year (y3) I was helping his class on a trip. The teacher did some quick-fire questions to use a few spare minutes. On the times tables up to x12 DS had one of the slower hands to go up as he manually worked each answer out. The teacher finished with more complex sums and DS's hand went up in the same time, now the fastest because he's used to quickly manually calculating everything. The other children were far slower because they had to switch from automatic knowledge to calculating and manually work out and manipulate how the sum related to their knowledge.

I'm not saying that times tables aren't useful, they are (as long as you actually understand and can apply what the pattern means and that is not always applicable), but it is niave and disablist to assume that all children will learn them and to set too much importance on a specific skill.

@UndertheCedartree Thank you, my granddaughter continued her home ed. She has just heard she has a place at Oxford.

Honest question: what is the point of automatic learning in maths? I never learnt my times tables off by heart - I have no ability for memorization. But I always saw patterns and calculated from the patterns. So my calculations always included several logical steps rather than any memorization.

My son’s school trialled the Y4 tests when he was in Y4 last year. At the beginning of the year he wasn’t very good at times tables and he joined the Times Tables Rockstars club at school (its a computer programme) and that helped him enormously.

I do think having easy recall of multiplication and division facts makes mental arithmetic easier. You can put your brainpower into the difficult bits.

And I say that as someone who was at primary school in the 1980s and didn’t really do times tables. I still don’t know them all now (and I have an A level in maths so not a complete mathematics hopeless case).

If it makes you feel better I never learnt my times tables properly. Still managed to get As in maths and further maths A level, and went on to do maths at uni..

Knowing times tables and how and when to apply them is extremely useful in day to day life.

I was once in a supermarket queue behind someone who had brought in a lot of vouchers for 3p off a tin of cat food. This was before barcode scanners.

It didn't occur to the assistant to count the vouchers and x3. She counted 3, 6, 9, 12, and would get to about 15 and lose count. Then the supervisor came over and she couldn"t do it either.... I think between the two of them and the customer they got there in the end.

@Booboostwo

Honest question: what is the point of automatic learning in maths?

You were lucky and could obviously cope without instant recall because you could spot patterns. Several logical steps could have led to several mistakes.

For students who can't spot the pattern or students who would attempt the logical steps but make mistakes, learning times tables is important. Have a read about cognitive load theory. Having times tables as facts you can recall leaves your brain free to learn the new Maths, not wasting brain power on working out times tables.

Hercwasonaroll I am not being combative, I swear. I wonder if there are more than one ways of learning and whether it might be difficult for people who learn one way to understand how other people learn another way because to me what you say sounds really odd. For me the patterns are everywhere and if you can't spot the patterns you rely on your unreliable memory to remind you of some low numbers. If you get any of those wrong, because memory can betray you, then the whole calculation is wrong and you won't even 'see' why. I mean how many times tables will you learn? Why stop at 12? For me if you can see the pattern of 2 then you know 4, 8, 16 etc. it never stops...(I hate 7 for obvious reasons).

I am a TA in year 6. I haven’t read the whole thread so apologise if I am repeating anything already said. We are now well under way with revision for SATS in my school and the children that struggle are those who don’t know their times tables well enough. The arithmetic test has 36 questions to be answered in 30 minutes. Topics covered that need times tables include the obvious long multiplication, long division as well as fractions (adding and subtracting with different denominators, multiplying and dividing), percentages, knowledge of order of operation (BIDMAS), multiplying and dividing by 10,100,1000, multiplying decimals. Approx 75-80% of the paper needs times tables so if they don’t know them it slows them down and they struggle to get to the end of the paper.

When I was in primary we learned ALL the tables, and (I'm not making this up) we then had to learn them backwards.

This was at age 10.

Still remember them today. (Thanks Mr Walsh)

The said teacher would go around the entire class, each if us having to stand up and recite which ever table he chose. If we couldn't, or got it wrong, we would have to write the table out in full, twenty times, as part of our homework that night.

Waaaaaaaay too much for a child that age to learn. Addition, subtraction and basic multiplication. That is the limit.

My children just went to a normal primary and by end of year 3 they knew all their times tables from 1-20 (not the 10s I mean all the numbers like 19 x 17 etc) as well as and the division facts and the power of numbers. They were doing that maths thing each week where they saw how many they could do in 2mins so they practised everyday. It’s boring for them but it’s just practise - times table games and tools helped a lot.

Pattern spotting is an indication of having a good mathematical mind. You are in a select group of people who can see and link those patterns. Most students don't. Therefore rote learning is better and more efficient for them. You are also lucky you can see when a calculation is wrong, a lot of students can't do this.

It's very difficult to appreciate just how much mental power times tables take up for students who haven't remembered them (or got a ver efficient strategy for working them out).

practical example:

remortgage - am I better off paying the fee or no fee but slightly higher monthly payments.
difference of of monthly payments x number of months of mortgage term.
easy to calculate roughly when you know your tables!

another one: phone contract
do I pay the phone in full in advance or over 1 year or 2 years?

Thanks Hercwasonaroll that's very helpful. DD is struggling with memorizing times tables, but when I talk to her about the patterns she gets it, so maybe she's more like me. I have a very weird mathematical mind. As a child my teachers thought I had a special talent for maths, but it seemed to peter out, only to pick up again later on. In retrospect I think I understand certain kinds of maths really well and others not at all. Probability, statistics, logic are great fun. Modern algebra is alien speak - I don't understand anything!

I would expect 2, 5 and 10 to be learned before school. Up to 12x by age 8 is reasonable IMO.

My dd knows them all and did by about 2nd week if yr 5, id say 25 out of 31 kids in her class are consistently getting 80+ out of 100 on their bi-weekly tests

Dts are y4 and they're expected to know them all by rote. They don't!

They do relatively well in tests but their practice sheets from Twinkl are four columns of 20 and they have to complete them all in less than four minutes. I think it's a big ask for most adults never mind 8yo.

All to comply with government testing.

@lollybee1 why on earth would you need to learn them before school?

That is a really poor attitude inwood. I was under the impression that most parents teach their children preschool. At least the people I know do.

@lollybee1 as a teacher I would be ok with it...if it’s what they are interested in...but I wouldn’t go out of my way to get my 4 yr old to learn them..as I said I am in Ireland. My 4 yr old won’t start school until age 5 and he won’t even touch multiplication until age 7...he might count in 2’s before then but that’s about it.

Pre school I taught my children to play nicely with peers, to use their manners, to dress and undress themselves, to be able to take themselves to the toilet independently, including wiping and washing their hands, to use a knife and fork properly... I also read to them all the time, played number games with them, played imaginative games with them, encouraged socialisation with other children, etc.
I didn’t teach them times tables. Both are doing extremely well at school, and pick up new concepts (such as times tables) quickly and easily.

You don't need to 'go out you way' you make it sound like a kid strapped to a desk reciting the 12x table. You just introduce as part of normal day to day play and life.