Best way to learn timetables

[confusedinlondon]

I need some help to understand how a child should learn his timestables.

My son 'passed' his x2,x5,x10,x3 in year 2. He had to take tests each week until he passed his x, / and mixed for a particular number. he was then moved onto the next number. he managed to complete his 2,5,10 and 3s

He is now in year 3 and is being tested on his 2,3,5,10,4,6,7 through one test each week - 20 questions from those timetables
however, he isn't fully confident with his 4 or 6 timestable, and sometimes make errors with his 3 and 5. this week he has been told to start learning the 7 timestable
is this correct, i thought he would need to fully master his 4 and 6 but it seems they are giving children 3 - 4 weeks to learn a new timetable before moving onto the next one.

is this right?
at home i have his reading his timetables book for 2 minutes on a particular number and then have him spend 3 minutes on timetable rockstars so 5 minutes 3 or 4 times a week. is there anything wrong with his approach.

Personally I would dump the revision and just encourage TT Rockstars. Encourage him to be competitive, work his way up the league table, lots of praise etc. TT Rockstars is a game - let him enjoy it for as long as he wants, don't make it a chore.

My two eldest have grown out of it now at 13 and 11 but by they went through a few years of being obsessed with it to the point I had to tell them to take a break. Getting all the points and badges etc, fighting their way up to be top of the school league.

It 100% worked though with permanent effect...still now they're both lightening quick and know every single table off by heart without skipping a beat.

He’s better at them than I am

My dd just started learning them at school. She’s been coming home singing songs the teacher has taught them to help the kids remember them.

TTR - as much screen time as they can have lol

Some students find a graphic like this helps.

It’s easier to see patterns (e.g that 4x is double 2x and 6x is double 3x) and that he already knows some of the 7 times table because he knows 2x 5x 10x etc, plus it highlights the square numbers, which are useful hooks for counting up or down.

7 is the hardest table as it’s an odd one that isn’t a multiple of any of the others. Lots of people never learn it completely. If he can learn some of it and then count up or down to the others, he’ll be fine.

Agree with Hedda they use number grids in schools so that children can see the patterns of numbers, especially good for doubling and seeing commonality ie 3,6,9 times table numbers.

For my children we went down the route of just learning it, just like you know a song, so you sing Old MacDonald, they know had a farm comes next. Lots of children try to work it out each time in their heads. I volunteer in year 4 which is the times table crunch year.

I used flash cards with my own children. Multiplication on the front and the answer on the back in numerical order to learn them one at a time in order then mixed them up to master it. If they got it right, it went to the back of the pile, if they didn't know one such as 4 x 6 then I would put that card one back, so the next card might be 8 x 6 but then the one after is 4 x 6 and I would repeat that process a couple of times until it went in. We also did flashcard dash where you put them on the floor and make them jump or hop to the answer, or drove a toy car to the answer.

As we drove to school I put a clear A4 pocket on the back of the front seat so the child is sat in front of the stuff you need them to learn, times tables or spellings and they could read it out in the car to times table songs.

Times Table rockstar is used in lots of schools, good if your child is competitive.

Dd likes matching pairs and snap so I make a set of cards for whichever table she is learning and we play games to match the question and answer. We also use the question cards for lightning round style quizzes.

We had a cd in the car. Sang them on the way to school.

And shouted 5 6 7 8

As she could never remember 7x8.