Please Settle An Argument About Learning Tables By Rote

[Kendodd]

I think it's not important at all to learn this, my friend thinks it's essential.

My reasons are that it takes seconds to work out, it's not going to hold you up in life. If you learn by rote you are not doing maths, you are just memorising a rhyme or a table, you don't have to understand it. Knowing it by rote might disguise the fact that you don't understand them. It is much more important to be able to work it out, if you can work it out this skill doesn't stop at twelve, admittedly it does gets harder the higher you go. Is there also an argument that if you will keep having to work it out you are exercising your brain?

Her reasons are that having instant recall is essential as people (maybe employers) are not going to be impressed if you can't do this. You can't remember it if you don't understand it anyway (I disagree) so it can't hide the fact you don't understand it. It's good to get children to work at remembering things and teachers think they should learn it and they should know more than us (agreed). She's useless and maths and would be lost if she'd never learned it all by rote (her words). If you have to work it out you're more likely to get it wrong.

I know both arguments for and against have some merit. If you had to come down on one side though what would you say? Is it really essential to know them and should I be making sure my children do this? As I said, personally I would rather they worked it out each time and kept those skills alive.

Neither if us are teachers so have no training or understanding on the theory behind learning tables by rote.

Taking "seconds" to work out each multiplication from scratch is going to add a lot of time onto how long it takes to do more complicated sums that build on multiplication facts. If you can't do each one in less than a second then you are better off learning them.

In fact, it's far more important to learn your tables (and the reverse facts for division) if you're not naturally gifted at maths -- because you're going to need to concentrate on the new concepts being taught and don't want to be occupying important brain capacity working out what 6 x 8 is every time.

I second times attack.
Children need understanding as well as rote knowledge. I feel that playing with malipulatives is essential in the early years, but rote learning to really engrained facts is useful in later life.

I know my tables by rote up to twelve. It's not that hard for a child to learn their tables. There are lots of fun games.

Tables aren't an end in themselves.

I think it's common to have learned your tables and know the answer to 6x7 without effort or distraction from the actual problem in which it's needed, and very rare to add 6+6+6+6+6+6+6 rapidly. And probably even greater discrepancy when dividing.

Oh, one last thing though, does anyone think there is any benefit in working them out in your head because it might exercise your brain? I think I might be clutching at straws with that one and I suppose why bother working it out if you don't have to and can just remember them.

definitely learn by rote so you have that instant recall. it doesn't mean that you don't understand the theory behind it though

If you can just remember them, I doubt you'll be recalculating because you'll just 'know'

There must be loads of other ways of practicing mental agility than repeating KS1 sums.

Farahilda - I wouldn't add all that, it's 5x7+7 lol, but yes it does take longer than just knowing what it is.

Am a great believer in learning timetables by rote and luckily the ds's school did too. They learnt them by doing timed tests three times a week. Moving onto the next times table when they could do 40 questions in 2 minutes.

I am also very grateful to my secondary maths teacher who got us to learn the squares of numbers up to 25. It comes in more useful than you would think in estimating calculations and checking if they are correct.

Definitely by rote. Otherwise how could you play along with Countdown ?

DD1 is excellent at maths but rubbish at memorising facts. The point at which her arch-rival (and best friend) started to pull ahead of her was the point at which there started to be time limits on maths tests. The difference was that he knew all his times tables by heart and didn't have to work them out every time.

She caught up quite quickly once she had the motivation of getting ahead of him again.

It's a necessary tool like learning the letters for reading.
No doubt there are ways around it, not least for the more able, but knowing tables by rote makes every calculation that much swifter.

I used to help in school with older primary school DC and my observation was that those who were struggling to do the maths curriculum for Y5 or Y6 were fundamentally handicapped by having tortuous, cumbersome "methods" of multiplying because they were never made to learn their tables by rote.

I have two DC. DC one was seemingly born knowing his tables and could recite them at 5. DC 2 really struggled. The school policy was not to teach by rote but in the end I made him do it at home and it improved his maths skills hugely.

learn the squares of numbers up to 25
Yes this too.

You children will exercise their brain by doing bigger, harder calculations that they are able to do without the distraction of having to do smaller calculations - when the know their tables instantly.

I don't mind whether it's learning by rote or learning by some other method, but I agree with others that instant recall is very very helpful for secondary level maths (and everyday life), as is instant recognition of common factors.

If you have to waste time counting up to get to say 7x5, then you may have forgotten why you wanted to do it in the first place within a larger problem.

When adding fractions, recognising that 54 has factors 9 and 2, and therefore 7/54 + 11/18 = 7/54 + 33/54 = 40/54 = 20/27 is helpful.
Similarly simplifying say 18/72 = 2/8 = 1/4 is hard if you don't quickly recognise that 18=2x9 and 72=8x9.

My elder DD has problems fixing times tables in her head, and finds the examples I gave above hard. If you can learn them to instant recall it's worth it imo.

instant recall is essential imo

I think in general with any other maths problem you are right. But I find it incredibly useful (in shops etc) to have my times tables at my fingertips without having to think about it. I honestly believe it's an important life skill.

"I wouldn't add all that, it's 5x7+7"

if you mean it's OK to use 5x table but not others!

I never learned them at school, I was in a window where learning them by rote was unfashionable. It has always been a nuisance ands even an embarrassment to me. I know them now after hours of practise with DSs and it has definitely improved my life. Not in any huge way but it is definitely worthwhile.

I agree absolutely that it's important to learn why 6x6=36 etc. first though.

I think it's not important at all to learn this, my friend thinks it's essential.
My reasons are that it takes seconds to work out, it's not going to hold you up in life.

When you typed that out did you recall that 'important' comes from the Latin 'in' meaning in and 'portare' meaning to carry and work out the spelling from that. Or did you do an instant recall of the spelling?
Why is instant recall OK for English but not for Maths?
There are lots of things that are easier if you can just remember them - for example, I could work out that 360 divide by 4 is 90, so a right angle is 90 degrees. But why not just remember the 90 degrees in the first place?

Anything can become second nature if you use it often enough and you can therefore do it without thinking. I got very good at the seventeen-and-a-half times table when the VAT rate was 17.5%

' if you mean it's OK to use 5x table but not others!'

Yes, I can do 5's because you divide by 2 and multiply by 10, lol.

I can do 2 and 10 because they're easy, 2 lots of something is obvious and 10 is just adding a 0.

6, 7, 8 and 9 I work out from 5 or 10, 11 I'm ok up till 11x10 because it's double the number you're multiplying, higher than 9 I add extra 11's.

12 I find quite hard tbh, 10 and 2 is usually easiest but if I'm doing it in my head I get a bit lost sometimes.

tabulahrasa All of that sounds time consuming and tedious. If you knew your tables you would know instantly that 9x12 is 84. No counting up, or working out necessary because it's embedded in your brain for the rest of your life.
Imagine how it would be if, in order to write a sentence, you had to go through the alphabet every time you wanted to spell a word?

My maths is poor but my mental arithmetic is excellent as a result of my 1960/1970s education. I used to have a Saturday job in the days before electonic tills. You had to add up what the customer had bought in your head and give correct change. It does get used now as well. What do you do in the supermarket when you want to compare the prices of products in different quantities?

Ultimately, knowing your times tables is the more important. How you get there is less important. Ideally, you should be able to work them out as well.

Times tables, and how they work, are critical if you want to take maths further. But even those of us who fail maths GCSE, and never want to look at a calculation again, are still going to need to know whether a multi-buy offer in the supermarket really is a saving.

You need to be able to think to yourself "One packet costs 77p, so three packets will be...ermm...7-14-21...add a zero cos it's 10s...a bit over £2.10. OK, 3 for £2 is a saving." And not go into a blind panic because you can't calculate the 7x table. That's where learning by rote is useful.

I have instant recall on all of my times tables. Makes me very popular when splitting the bill in restaurants.

"If you knew your tables you would know instantly that 9x12 is 84"

9 x 12 isn't 84, though... it's 108... (7 x 12 is 84)

See I wouldn't know what 9 x 12 is, do I didn't spot whether the answer is right or wrong, lol.

It is time consuming, I mean I manage, but I'd not recommend it.

ds really resisted learning his, as he can work them out very fast,

he is great at maths and he would say his tables just adding on the next number, so he didn't know it, he was adding as he went.

I got him to say them faster and faster so he couldn't do it!

as to why, well, I use times tables all the time, with cooking, shopping, sewing etc, lots of simple everyday things. I can't imagine how annoying it would be to have to work it out.

The other side of times tables which is rarely practised is the division facts. I teach my kids that they have to know, without working it out that:

3x4 = 12
4x3 = 12
and that
12 divided by 3 = 4
12 divided by 4 =3