16x table anyone?

[amayzon]

DS (in year 3) is good at numbers. The teacher has been working on times tables all year and DS is further on than all the other children (no one else has been signed off on knowing everything up to 10x10 yet). However, DS finally got 100% on those tests and since then the teacher has given him 11x, 12x. I thought she'd think of something new after that, but since then he's had 13x, 14x and 15x. He keeps getting 100% on the tests, so this week he's progressed onto 16x!

He's worked out that its just 6X +10x (which is why he keeps passing these tests), but I bet that won't stop the school teaching him that in the future and then making him practice it ad nauseum when the time comes.

I have the feeling that the teacher is finding things for DS to do whilst he waits for the others. AIBU to think that he could just move on to something more difficult, maybe year 4 work??

What would other schools do?

Our schools does division and mixture of time tables after the normal tables. After that it goes to how quickly you can answer them. (I seem t oremember ds having to do 30 in a minute then the speed getting faster.) Personally I think doing 13x, 14x etc is weird.

I seem to recall decimals in higher level times tables tests so questions like
8 x 0.5
rather than
8 x 5

I agree, it is weird! Especially as the logic is that he should only do up to 16 x 12.

Ha, I had nearly exactly the same with DS3, except he was given 13 x table, then 17 x table. He commented that his teacher is giving him prime numbers tables to learn! I'm sure it was just to give him something to do. His teacher does a maths challenge each week. Differentiated tests, but all DC measured on how well they did on their test, like a handicap, so they could compete. Great idea, just wish he had something more useful than 17 x tables to test.

I think it would be useful if everyone learnt the tables up to 20 times 20.

Some of them are really easy anyway, eg I always think of 16 times table as being 8 doubled, and it is good for them to think about these relationships. Quick and accurate recall of these kind of sums will save time in calculations later on, and help them to notice glaringly incorrect answers.

base 16 is handy if you ever have to decipher a hexadecimal piece of code that the computer can't read but you REALLY REALLY need the info from.

It is lazy of the teacher, IMO.

I'd get my class to do one of two things:

1. work out the corresponding division number sentences

2. use partitioning to find other ways of solving a problem.
   For example, 5 x ? = 65
   I know 5 x 10 = 50
   There is 15 left over.
   I know 5 x 3 = 15
   so there must be 13 lots of 5 in 65.

Also, multiplying and dividing by 10 is a level 3 target.
By 100 is a level 4 target.

(In APP)

16x is good in some careers, honest (computing in particular). The 16x is the best to learn by a long way if you have a child who's rather too good at maths and might, just possibly, end up in a scientific discipline. Personally I wish my school had insisted I learn them, instead of some of the timewasting stuff I had to do. imho....

Sounds like your child won't struggle whatever - why not give them the advantage of more background knowledge to work with?

No, he won't struggle at least for the foreseeable future....but there's another 10 weeks of school, so will he be doing the 23x table this year too?

He learns everything number-related quickly and he tends to figure out relationships that other people have to have pointed out to him. I am just concerned that its always going to be like this i.e. 10% of his time doing something worth knowing and the rest just doing the equivalent of mowing the grass with a pair of nail scissors!

Amayzon, get him some Murderous Maths books, the Maths equivalent of Horrible Histories. My DS loves them, they are a very accessible way of bringing his maths on.

Thanks, I will get those books. It seems a shame to turn maths into something boring for him by making him learn pointless things especially as there is so much to learn that would interest and challenge him.

Teach him to count in hex .