Times Tables by heart?

I agree with you, Pen.
Whenever something is mentioned in schools as in all pupils will have to know or learn.... the assumption is always that they have not been learning it up til then, and usually they have. It will turn out to be another stick to beat the teachers with.

lily @ 16:30: absolutely spot on. Testing for testing's sake rather than to find out something useful about what kids have learned.

In these days when calculators are freely available, rote learning is an unnecessary chore. Children should be able to estimate to make sure their answers make sense, so should understand the principle of serial addition (multiplication). This extra imposition by the govt. puts an unfair burden on children who find rote learning difficult. As for govt's claim that it will help teachers to identify children who are 'failing', I think they know that already. Despair!

"Children who are failing"-nightmare phrase! Takes me back to things I prefer to forget-not the children or the real teaching but the growing requirement to 'teach to the test' which is getting steadily worse. So pleased I am out of it!

But Liz how do they do a quick estimate if they can't do the mental sum needed? How do they know, say, that six of something at £7.45 is somewhere halfway between six sevens (£42) and six eights (£48) so is about £45?

Not true LizR everyone needs a basic grasp of our number system. And can I repeat for those who didn't get it first ir second time, learning the tables is already a requirement in the National Curriculum, it's the testing at end of KS2 that's new (and unneccessay)

Will never forget manning a refreshment stall recently with a 16year old helper. Customer wanted 4 Orange squashes at 10p each and handed over £1, whereupon my helper shot off to get his calculator. Customer and I stood open mouthed. I later learned that he was considered 'quite bright'!

sallyswin The rot set in well and truly when cash tills started not only to add up how much a customer was to pay, but to tell the shop assistant how much change they were to get. No need for anyone even to be able to count out the difference between the amount owed and the amount tendered, let alone add it up and work out how much is due.

I'm rather late coming in on this one, but like everyone else, can speak from experience. Being a smarty pants, I knew my times tables at age 7 and could also recognise the patterns within them, eg. that if you took the 9x lines out of all the preceding tables, and put them together you could go a long way to making up the 9x table, and so on.

I think tables are a useful tool for life and feel for those who can't relate to them. The example of the (bright) young helper dashing for his calculator is a case in point.

I did read somewhere that around 20% of adults in this country are functionally illiterate (so I'm guessing that could mean that they can't write a letter that is grammatically correct?) and even worse, 40% are functionally innumerate. Presumably that would mean they can't work with numbers at any meaningful level.

This is despite the best efforts of teachers through the years. So something needs to be done.

Tables may not enable someone to calculate the surface area of Jupiter, (no, nor me!) but they will surely be useful day to day when dealing with, eg. cash transactions. Invaluable, I'd say.

My principal use for times tables is, of course, on Countdown! It's more difficult once it gets past 12 x 12 though.

I was a teacher for years. As a child I was taught tables by rote so made sure my classes always understood the concept behind times tables and I encouraged a love of number patterns etc. The vast majority knew them all by the end of Year 4 and once learned they stick for life and make solving complex maths problems so much easier.
And its 'fewer' children, not less.
Shall we go on to grammar now............

I hypothesise that (most people'd probably say I have a theory that... ) when people don't remember a useful thing they've learned at school, it's because they haven't had to use it much since learning it and so their knowledge and ability to use it has gone rusty. What I remember of the foreign languages I learned is very rusty—case in point—because I haven't needed to use them much for quite some years.

So I suggest that that young lad, supposedly "quite bright", who went off to get his calculator for a simple sum, didn't do mental arithmetic much as a rule, probably because he didn’t need to in his everyday life, and because he could always resort to a calculator. Even cheap phones have calculators on them nowadays.

If children don't understand what times tables mean and are confused about number generally, it's because they are rushed through the learning too quickly from the moment they start school. Trisher, if you thought of numbers as abstract, it's likely you had too few opportunities to work with concrete materials in early years and Key Stage 1. Counting, adding and taking away real objects is vital for a young child to learn one-to-one correspondence, more than, fewer than etc. and should not be hurried through.

I think there is something in that lizzy. I had a very traditional, even old-fashioned education and I can remember using cowrie shells to help do addition and subtraction, aged 5 and 6. That, along with learning times tables made arithmetic both relatively easy and useful.

Algebra at Grammar School was a different matter - I hated it and have never ever found a use for quadratic equations! Has anybody?

I must confess I haven't read the entire thread so perhaps my question has already been answered, but arcompletely different here in Scotland? Both my 9 year old dgcs know their tables up to 12x, can happily play about with these numbers and calculations, use them in long multiplication/division and understand what they're doing. They're in primary 5 which I think is year 4 in England.

I was more taken aback when dgd announced she had diacritical marking for homework!!

*are we

We ought to tell them that when we went to school we had to do mental arithmetic involving eggs by the dozen and pounds, shillings and pence!

My latest experience of kids these days not being able to do times tables was when we were in America recently. Still not sure how to ask for petrol at the petrol station, I went in and said I needed about 10 gallons. The boy on the till was totally incapable of even guessing how much that would be in dollars. I worked it out for him.

Here in Germany I am always amazed by the convoluted way they do calculations - I'm usually there ages before they are, simply by dividing bigger numbers into smaller ones and multiplying up larger ones to make the arithmetic simpler. If you've learnt your times tables this is the next step along, surely.

By the way, Elegran, I think you missed a "+1" in point 4) of your explanation. It doesn't make sense otherwise.

You are right, JackyB Thank you. It was right in my first draft - but that disappeared into the wide blue yonder and I had to type it all in again.

lizzy yes you are probably right, could have been because it was never done, possibly I wasn't ready for it or maybe I just zoned out. Whatever the reason I think there is still a possibility of children knowing their tables (as I did) and not understanding. I do think the teaching of maths is important and tables can be a useful tool, but they are not some sort of goal to measure either school or pupil achievement.

Not read the whole thread- but the school granchildren attend to insist on all children to learn their tables. As GS was struggling with 9 x and 7x I made some cards for him to practise them 'out of order' (eg not chanting) - putting aside all those he got wrong- looking at them again and test himself again on those- and within a few days he'd got them all right.

Being able to calculate things quickly in your head is really useful surely- unlike catechism ;)

trisher I wonder whether you suffer from some element of dyscalculia, the numeracy form of dyslexia. This occurred to me when I read the following in one of your posts. I never thought of numbers as concrete things simply as symbols like letters...... Hence when it came to doing other things like minus numbers I was a bit lost. Like dyslexia discalculia comes in many forms and levels of severity.

I do, however, think many people have a glass ceiling where maths is concerned. You get to a cetain level and then can get no further no matter how hard you try or how well you know your tables.

Like most people I gave up maths after O level but came back to it when I began some professional training that would have brought me up to 1st year undergraduate level. With the help of DH I scraped through the A level standard work, but without him I would have foundered. But with all his help, I simply could not get any further. He would patiently describe one theorem I had to study. Book in front of us, going down the proof line by line I just about grasped it. Move my eyes to the problem I had to solve and my comprehension disappeared. He did this many times, but I could not understand it for more than 5 seconds. In the end I gave the course up because it was quite clear that I had a mathematical ceiling just above O level and nothing, no matter how hard I tried would really get me any further.

It is an excellent idea. I am 79 and still use them! My granddaughter goes to a private school, she is 10 and they are taught there. I never did understand why this country stopped teaching them in state schools. They are most useful. I do not understand why some of you are opposed to them!

BTW I cut cards out of thin coloured card, about 5cm x 5 cm - put the 'sum' on one side, answer on the other - spread them on table with the 'sums' facing up- pick card, give answer then check- if the answer is correct put in an envelope, if wrong, to the side - and then test those again at the end. Then all back in one envelope with 'title' on ( 9 x table, etc)- and have one envelope for each. After a few days when only a few 'stick' - put those all in a separate envelope together, and keep testing just those. When all ok- separate again into right envelope and test from time to time. It works with most children.

Great for learning difficult spellings, foreign vocab or verb endings, names of capitals, flags, whatever ...etc.

Like most others I learned tables by rote but always loved maths. Very worried lately to find I can't instantly recall answers and so have started practising tables again - in private!