8/9 year olds to know their times tables within 6 seconds

[noblegiraffe]

It has been decided that 6 seconds is the time limit for children to know their tables for the new Y4 times tables check, to ensure that they are recalling them, not working them out.

schoolsweek.co.uk/pupils-will-get-6-seconds-to-complete-times-tables-test-questions/

6 seconds per question isn't instant recall. In six seconds most children can work out the answer so I'm not sure what their thinking is.

The Tories really do want education to return to the Victorian era.
This is appalling discrimination against children with all manner of learning disabilities, or simply anxious perfectionist to children - I would have gone to pieces under the time pressure, but had no issue without.

I think the test sounds like a very good idea, except that 6 seconds sounds really slow. A couple of seconds is considered ideal in most TT memorizing games/systems.

Instant recall (NOT "working them out") is important if we want students to have higher-order thinking skills as they get older. If you get to secondary level and you still have to devote head-space to thinking about how to calculate the most basic numbers, you will have less head-space left over for thinking about the more complex (and interesting) aspects of whatever mathematical problem you are trying to solve. This causes errors and stress for students.

Obviously there will be children with slow processing who struggle with this more-it goes without saying that such children need to be supported as much as possible. But we can't stop aiming for instant recall as an ideal simply because some people have greater difficulty doing it (or even find it impossible)if you adopt that kind of logic, we should basically stop trying to teach children to do anything at all.

Yet another way to fail some kids.
I would probably fail this. DS1 would probably fail this.
Yet I have a degree (and masters) in physics - ie pretty maths orientated.
I'm also dyslexic. Would perform poorly on a spelling SAT. I can usually create grammatically correct sentences, but would struggle to underline the non consequential partial conjunction, or whatever the flavour of the day is.

I am NOT STUPID. Please stop setting up additional tests for people like me to fail.

I have two concerns- firstly they are losing data. As it is computer marked there is no reason why they couldn't require a return button and actually time them. In that way you could get a clearer picture of say which quartile a child was in, which might then link to performance in SATs. There is a risk that a child who answers all the questions in 5.95 seconds is considered the same as one who answers them in 3 seconds and is given little/no extra support. Another child who who is marginally slower so would have been just over 6 minutes is in intervention groups for a year. In the same way my daughter scraped through the phonics check on the pass mark and for years that was cited as evidence that she had no problems. It took until yr5 for a teacher to say 'You know what I think she us adjusting for underlying problems.'

Secondly for some children the modality matters. The same child was really slow on paper with big maths beat that because the numbers were close together (printed half the size due to cost cutting), in an intervention group and tested orally she had instant recall. There was nothing wrong with her times tables just with how they were presented. Some children looking at you ds spend far more time on a computer than others. They will find their way around quicker than others. I am not sure whether it can be done on a touchscreen but again due to differences in school technology you might be comparing someone on a touchscreen iPad, with someone on a keyboard with a number pad with someone looking at a row of buttons along the top. The additional potentially confounding variables in there bother me.

I would like to see a test where a response is actually timed, not limited and verbal checks on anyone who scores a low mark to make sure that the correct intervention is adopted for that child. Anyone can get a low mark on the day for many different reasons, some teachers/ actually more head teachers and civil servants look at the numbers and fail to see the child.

*she is adjusting

I do agree that they should do some sort of test to find out who is having difficulty, like PSC. But I don't agree with timed online one.

Yes, it's better that children have instant recall.And I think they should. But most of them get there with current curriculum anyway.
But timed online testing may not be the reflection of child's ability, and have so many flaws like shouldwestayorshouldwego says.

Although I don’t agree with the extra testing I do think that use of things like times tables rock stars to encourage instant recollection of times tables is a good thing.

I also know for my ds who until now has really struggled with maths TT rock stars has really helped him so in our case he has gone from barely being able to recall his three times tables in year 3 to knowing most quickly by this point in year 4 because it works on how he learns best.

Out of interest, I just asked DD3 (9.7, now YR5) if she is still doing TT Rockstars at school. She has been at the school 6 months. For clarity, they do their times table tests on paper.

She said "Yeah". "How's it going?" "Ok, I think. Well, the last time I did it, I got 60/60 and did it in 2 minutes."

So that's an average time of 2 seconds per question. I doubt she was the fastest, either. The children do get very quick with their recall.

DD is in year 7 and her high school use TT rockstars.

6 seconds per question isn't instant recall. In six seconds most children can work out the answer so I'm not sure what their thinking is.

I think you’re making an assumption that there was some thinking.

I know it's very naive of my but I live in hope.

I’m assuming it might be the maths equivalent of the inclusion of real words in the PSC. They might have done it for a reason, it’s just not a logical one.

6s is a huge amount of time and ordinarily if a child took that long to answer, you’d say they didn’t know it.

We have TT rockstars. They have been doing “battle of the bands” against the other classes. I think dd’s record is 134 in 3 minutes. She is very fast indeed and, admittedly, very high ability at maths. (She won’t get any faster now as she is now limited by typing speed.) These include division as well so technically much harder.

A 6 second time limit wouldn’t bother her in the slightest. (And she is an anxious, perfectionist child.) The main concern would be to get her to slow down to avoid any possible typing errors! They have all been playing this game obsessively for weeks. It is like having a test on “Pac-Man” when we were at school.......

HotIn. I am similar, i wouldnt be good at timed TT (i just have awful memory esp short term), but i have a level aths and a bsc. As you go on in maths it is understanding and accuracy, quite different to TT, though obviously TT are needed a lot.
I struggle to remember and apply grammar rules as it is hard enough to think what i want to say.
Afterall we have calculators in exams and on our phones. Applying knowledge is probably more important than learning facts now.

I wish this was around when I was younger. At 20 I still struggle with my multiplication because I have to work it out

Applying knowledge is probably more important than learning facts now.

No, it’s definitely not. You need knowledge to make connections and have insights.

No, it’s definitely not. You need knowledge to make connections and have insights.

This. Tables are very basic but not knowing them is a huge gap that would be difficult to overcome. Bit like saying that other things are far more important in being a champion triathlete than being able to ride a bike.

^^ Agree. If you don't know stuff you can't build on it properly.

If you don't know your times tables it is really hard to simplify fractions.
Or solve quadratics.
Or do division.

If you don't know orders of events in History, you can't see connections between things. You don't see how the Great Fire of London helped with the Plague, or whatever.

It's funny how maths get held to different standards to music and sport and dance.

When it comes to music and sport and dance, everyone accepts that drilling the basics to the point of automaticity is important, not because the teacher is trying to turn the student into a robot but because being fluent and automatic in the basics (=not needing to consciously think about how to do them) is, paradoxically, vital if you want to get good at the interesting bits. You can't become a sensitive and imaginative dancer unless your limbs and body slide automatically into place; if you have to hover there awkwardly remembering consciously how to do this move or that move, you won't have any headspace left over for interpreting the dance in a creative way. Same with music. It's why music teachers make you do scales and arpeggios and other things until your fingers fall into place without your needing to think about them.

With maths, on the other hand, people seem to think that a teenager who has to sit there humming and hawing and doing dumb tricks on their fingers to work out 7 x 8 is somehow going to be in a better position to solve complicated problems in algebra and geometry later on.

A few people are able to get by in advanced maths without getting their maths facts fluent and quick, because these are the people whose working memories are larger than average, meaning that they have enough leeway to think about 7 x 8 AND the complex bits of the problem at the same time. Most people are not like this, and if they have not got their maths facts fluent and automatic in primary school, then trying to do the hard stuff later on is going to feel like wading through mud. When we are designing school systems, we have to look at what works for the greatest number of people.

Should be much faster by that age. It's something you just have to know.

6 seconds is very slow.

DS is very proud of his 0.8 something average on TT Rockstars. It's come down quite rapidly since starting to use it in September.

I think it's really not really about 6 seconds. Most of children will learn to recite times table with ease by yr4.
It's the same as PSC, most children will pass. What they do with ones who are struggling for whatever reason, is what I think really matters. Investing on TT Rockstars etc from early age, could be the one solution.

I think the six seconds thinking time will mean children who aren't secure in times table knowledge will slip through the check.

And children who have guessed the answer and got it right.
25 question in 5 minutes doesn't really determine who really have a problem.