Times Table - new government testing

[Blythe13]

My son is hopeless at times tables, he just can't remember them and I'm worried about the new government testing. Any good advice as it's making him feel really stupid and he's not.

[noblegiraffe]

Infinity isn’t a number, spicy!

[Pratchet]

I don't know why they decided to insist in understanding TT before learning them. Learning - easy when young and they like it, boring when older and they could be intrigued by understanding. Understanding when young - harder and less productive. Understanding when older - easier and more interesting. Plus, if you introduce fractions when they do t know TT it's so hard it sets them up to fail, they think they don't understand the fractions and aren't good at maths, disaster.

[Pratchet]

So many kids think they can't do fractions when actually they just don't know their TT

[sirfredfredgeorge]

But if they don’t know their times tables they can’t do times tables

No, if they don't know their times tables, it will just take them a longer time to work out the answer to their times tables, they will still be able to do them, if they understand the method (and potentially have access to something such as pen/paper to aid with working memory limits)

[Arkadia]

Pratchet, YES ;) I totally agree with what you are saying.
Take data handling that nowadays seems to be very popular in early years. I don't think I was EVER taught how to read something like a bar graph, but never in my life have I had a problem with them. Instead they can be hard for very small children as they require quite a lot of abstraction. So, let's replace the hours spent doing them with something more productive like... Let me see...

[strawberry1122]

It might sound silly but its all about adding and dividing. Times the number by ten, then divide the number by two, should be simple to grasp. Then work your way up adding the number to the half number. Actually sounds more complicated when reading it like that. But thats the way i learned and am teaching my child.

[Pratchet]

It's a no brained for me. I know there are teachers on here, and tutoring a few kids doesn't make me an expert, but when children I've taught thought they couldn't do fractions, turned out a bit of intensive TTs sorted them out.

[noblegiraffe]

No, if they don't know their times tables, it will just take them a longer time to work out the answer to their times tables, they will still be able to do them, if they understand the method (and potentially have access to something such as pen/paper to aid with working memory limits)

Not sure you’re aware of how ridiculous that is!

And that’s all very well with 4/7 when they know they have to divide by 7. What if the question is simplify 28/63 when they don’t know they have to divide by 7?

[Greenyogagirl]

You don’t need to know them unless you’re planning on working in a career which needs maths

[user789653241]

sir, what you are saying only works effectively for someone who are really good at maths. Most children will suffer without secure times table knowledge.

[MrsWooster]

We have timestable placemats and make it a game- chanting them at breakfast time, looking for the patterns etc. Y3 ds, who finds some stuff tricky, is catching up and yR dd is flying because she doesn't know they're meant to be hard... start as early as poss.

[MrsWooster]

Ps they're from little Wigwam but I'm sure others do them too..

[TeenTimesTwo]

Not knowing your times tables makes secondary maths much harder than it needs to be.
Despite extensive time spent on it, my DD2 has struggled with times tables. (It seems to come hand in hand with other issues she has such as knowing left and right, and time telling.)

She is now in Year 8, and not knowing her times tables all ways rounds means she has trouble with any questions involving

• fractions, ratios, percentages & probability

She will soon have trouble with factorising algebraic expressions and Pythagoras.

This makes maths way harder for her than it needs to be, because she can't spot simplifications, and has to keep stopping thinking about word problems to do the basic multiplications or divisions.

I would urge any of you whose children are capable of learning their times tables to put the time and effort in because it will massively hinder their ability to succeed in secondary maths if they can't for example spot that 28 and 63 have a common factor of 7.

[Pratchet]

I blame the National Curriculum under Blair. I remember seeing some expert saying how it was essential that children understand everything before they could learn anything and I just thought, oh crap, there gonghe chances of my kids if they are rubbish at maths.

[user789653241]

Sir, I am quite curious. Without knowing times table, how can you do multi digit multiplication, fraction multiplication, decimal multiplication, factoring etc, etc. as fast as people who knows them? If you can do it, you are one of the gifted ones, so I don't think it's very common among normal people.

[SpicyTomatos]

I would urge any of you whose children are capable of learning their times tables to put the time and effort in because it will massively hinder their ability to succeed in secondary maths if they can't for example spot that 28 and 63 have a common factor of 7.

Simplifying 28/63 strikes me as a somewhat tedious question from which little of use can be learned, but exactly the sort of thing that gets asked in secondary school tests. Therefore learning times tables will help if the purpose is doing well in tests at that level. It won't help much for higher maths or real life.

[CuboidalSlipshoddy]

people like my colleagues who still don't know how to find the original price of a product priced at £12 with a 20% discount

Well presumably they are now allowed to use calculators

I bet you'll find a lot of people wouldn't be able to do that with a calculator. The problem isn't the arithmetic, it's know what arithmetic has to be done. Given that question and a calculator, a substantial part of the population and to judge from when these sort of things come up, a substantial part of MN will come up with £14.40.

[TeenTimesTwo]

Spicy Simplifying 28/63 strikes me as a somewhat tedious question from which little of use can be learned, but exactly the sort of thing that gets asked in secondary school tests. Therefore learning times tables will help if the purpose is doing well in tests at that level. It won't help much for higher maths or real life.

Well, I guess that depends on whether you care if your DC passes their maths GCSE which is often a pre-requisite for accessing higher education and jobs. Personally I would like my DD2 to pass GCSE maths (first time).
She will be hindered in this if she can't get more of a hang of her times tables within the next 3 years, because GCSE maths tests a load of stuff that is made much harder if you don't know your times tables and associated facts such as recognising common factors.

[noblegiraffe]

Cuboidal like Jacob Rees-Mogg and the Sun newspaper then. Good teaching moment on reverse percentages here:

twitter.com/Jacob_Rees_Mogg/status/968534387057942529?s=20

[noblegiraffe]

Simplifying 28/63 strikes me as a somewhat tedious question from which little of use can be learned, but exactly the sort of thing that gets asked in secondary school tests

Oh dear god save us from the ‘when am I ever going to use this in real life?’ brigade.

[Pratchet]

Noble again 👆🏻

[Alyosha]

The whole "real life" brigade are annoying - the purpose of education is knowledge for its own sake, no one objects to History in the same way (who needs to know the when/what of WW2 for their day-to-day life?).

Secondly their irritating because they're wrong, any retail job needs a basic understanding of TT & arithmetic.

in the 28/63 example I can think of a lot of times when I have had to do something similar for my job, i.e. 28ml mini of 63ml product, how to price it?

Understanding how to get the original price of a £12 product with a 20% discount is 100% really about memorising the steps, when I first started in my job many moons ago I had completely forgotten how to do it. I taught myself and didn't understand "why" it worked, but it didn't matter. After 6 months of doing the calculation regularly I got it, knowing how to do it helped me to understand it; the calculation mechanics can come before the understanding.

[Alyosha]

They're irritating! arrgh

[SpicyTomatos]

Should we still teach kids to use log books, or has the arrival of technology meant that they serve no use in real life? Most things that are taught do have meaningful uses.

[noblegiraffe]

Yeah, why should anyone have to learn anything when we can just Google it?

Or maybe employers want people who are basically literate and numerate and don’t have to look up every spelling in a dictionary and every calculation on a calculator? Because if they’re that ignorant, they’re likely to make mistakes even with technology.