Times Tables by heart?

THEY HAVE NEVER STOPPED BEING TAUGHT IN STATE SCHOOLS! Sorry I am shouting but this has been said so many times on this thread, What has stopped is the pointless chanting and learning by rote. Instead a more logical approach is taken -so 2 and 4 times tables are taught together because there is a relationship. I don't think I am dyscalsic. I was just a good little girl who chanted her tables obediently and thought the answer came by some sort of magic. I was a bit over imaginative!

Like most I learned the tables by rote and always loved maths. However, I recently realised that I could no longer recall some of them and so have been practicing them - in private. Very worried about this, anyone else have the same problem???

At primary age I loved arithmetic and my father sang my times tables with me and taught me a number of useful techniques. Secondary school Maths was a bit of a pain, as whenever I asked "Why this formula?" e.g. quadratic etc, the answer was more or less, "Because I'm older than you and I said so". When I went to training college, we moved onto modern maths, which started to clarify why, but it wasn't till I enrolled with the OU and started studying pure maths and computing that it finally slotted into place! The only problem I experienced was when I first started calculus, which I was put off at my first OU tutorial, where our tutor/cousellor cheered us up no end by telling us that if we had never studied calculus, we were going to find it really difficult, with the inevitable result that we were put off. It wasn't until summer school when a tutor pointed out that it was really easy and explained it in simple terms. I was so pleased that I eventually married him!

I had a lot of trouble with tables, which we learned by rote at school, and consequently was hopeless at arithmetic (especially mental arithmetic) and later at maths. Always bottom of the class! I was told i was 'number blind'! Numbers never really slotted into place for me until i joined the Forces and had to do my Army Educational Certificates, at which time something clicked. I've been very grateful that it did, because i've had several jobs that depended on my being able to employ arithmetical and basic maths skills, and i qualified as a book-keeper. I think most people find use for simple multiplication tables throughout their lives. My grandson is eight and knows all his tables to 15x but he told me today they didn't learn them by rote (not sure what method they did use, but it seems to work very well).

I knew them all of my heart at primary school. Failed maths O level despite being at a posh girls' grammar school. The teaching there was simply awful.
When my children were young, we did the times tables walking to school. And that's how I now know them again.
Wish I had had better teachers back in the day, I think maths could be a rather fab subject.
As for grilling them on this and that, some stupid, and I really do mean that word, minister saying our children are lagging behind China in these stakes made me so furious. We should be thinking about creating thinking, happy, creative people. Not dolts that can produce endless facts and statistics.

I watched a lad in a shop today counting night lights in a box. Nicely packed in neat rows of ten. And he counted them one by one!

My father bought me a book - The Cheats Times Tables book which showed how to turn tables around. 7 X 8 is the same as 8 X 7 etc, meaning that by the time you get to the nine times table you only need to learn 9 X 9. For someone like me with an appalling memory it was wonderful. It also showed other ways to play with numbers and got me thinking about the logic of them. Didn't help much, girls didn't do maths at my Sec Mod. We did business arithmetic.

I've been wondering why today's children are going to have to learn up to the 12 times tables. We don't work in dozens anymore. Just shows how much thought the Government have put into this. I also agree with OP schools have never stopped teaching the times tables!

I am of the generation that had to learn tables by rote and I just couldn't do it! My mother would shout at me and hit me which meant I then couldn't even recite two times tables! I did pass my 11+ and just about managed to scrape through 'O' level maths with the help of the most patient teacher in the world, but I had to devise my own methods of remembering which I still use, based on tricks like turning the numbers round eg I can not do 8X6 but do know the more rhythmic 6 eights are 48. 7X7 = 49 (my brother was born in 1949). For 7x8 it is 49 plus 1 plus 6 (ie 7) which takes you to 56.

This may sound complicated but I do it so quickly no one would know. It is exactly the same with number bonds eg 6 +5 is 5+5 and 1 more = 11. Despite trying for years I cannot learn number sequences though I remember poems and passages of Shakespeare learned in school to this day!!

I became a primary teacher and later worked with children who had learning difficulties and was able to share so many tricks with them. The most successful involved using rhythm and fingers. I don't care what others say - you have fingers why not use them?! If you have poor memory there are other ways than rote learning!

Shizam Oh how I agree with you. There was a time creativity and arts subjects were prized and well thought of and we produced the best in the fields of art,design, cinema and theatre. They were our forte. Now they are seen as unnecessary mostly I think the result of allowing the bean counters to take over education. There are things you can't examine and test but which pay dividends in adult life.

As a primary Maths specialist I truly believe that every child is a mathematician until someone tells him or her they're not.

In the same way that John Lennin though every child is an artist until someone disillusions them.

Or children know the can sing until told otherwise.

Which is why I love the Eric Morecambe classic that he was playing the right notes though not necessarily in the right order.

A good teacher will help her pupils find the 'right order' and give them back that confidence.

nfk i wonder if they still teach business arithmetic in schools - i personally think that it is much more useful for most than mathematics. The only bit of maths i ever used after school was pi. I used to work for a firm that cleaned and repaired carpets and it was useful, when working out estimates to be able to work out how much new fringe was needed for a circular chinese rug, and the surface area for cost of cleaning when the repair foreman had purloined your calculator, which he frequently did!

In an age when we have calculators, it seems to me that it's having a dog and barking yourself, we're be better off teaching maths rather than arithmetic. It's also more important to understand the process than memorise answers, someone who knows how to multiply but can't remember tables can do 0.175 x 8¾, but someone who knows the tables but doesn't know what they mean will be lost.

I saw this time and time again at work, the difference between a good engineer and a bad one was usually the difference between those who understood what they'd been taught and those who had just memorised it parrot-fashion to pass an exam.

Just because you know your number bonds does not mean you don't understand. The two are not mutually exclusive and best go hand in hand.

In fact those who don't need a calculator to work out 4x7 and understand that that's the same as 2x7 doubled make the best mathematicians.

I suppose it's a question of mental agility.

So 4x3.5 could be 4x7 halved or 2x3.5 doubled.

That's not what I said. Of course you're well off if you can remember tables and understand, but memorising tables is not a substitute for understanding. There's a limit to how many practical calculations use the product of two integers between 2 and 12, and hence a limit to the usefulness of memorising them. In my field, reciprocals are common, so I can recite the reciprocals of integers off the top of my head, but not because I made an effort to learn them, it's just from common usage.

I know 1/2π = 0.159, for example, but only because it's very common.

Bully for you crun - you raise the standard of debate to a whole new level.

Of course, common usage is the key. This is why scaffolders understand Pythagoras - though they call it the 3;4;5 rule

However we are discussing primary school children and for any calculations over a certain level they would be encouraged to use a calculator rather than struggle with, as an example 'long' division.

And it's not a case of being 'well off' (?) if you can remember know your tables and understand them, it's usually the aim of the class teacher that children assimilate both knowledge and understanding.

But Anya the government are not proposing testing understanding- just rote learning for tables.

Which means that they themselves do not understand the difference - probably because politicians in general are more likely to have dropped mathematical studies early and concentrated on other subjects.

Maybe we should have testing for politicians- if you don't know your tables and your spellings you can't stand (or maybe you don't get paid!!)

crun- I truly thing it is not a good idea to believe we will always have calculators and computers to hand ...

KS2 Mathematics test understanding and surely ability to know tables.

Test, test test as we obviously can't trust the teachers!!!! Glad I retired.

I do believe the craze for not teaching tables was dead and gone in 70s and 80s. My son's learned their tables as juniors in the 80s and GC know them now. Why can't the government rely on 'in school ' accountability? It's all propaganda to knock the profession.

It is all "smoke and mirrors" with governments' policies.
They are always trying to prove 'they' made a difference and choose the easiest things, that make good headlines and that the general public will hook into, to use as a measure!

Everyone,(see this thread !) has an opinion on times tables and if you insinuate enough that they are not being taught well enough people believe it whether it is true or not! People then rely on anecdotes about themselves , their kids/grankids etc to justify their opinion but that is a very small sample to base national policy on!

Some daft person at the DfE in a 'policy development unit', who most likely only left school 5 or 6 years ago and with a PPE who has never been 'teacher side' will have come up with this good idea to demonstrate the impact of current education policy and gain a career point.
Cynical...yes I am!

I was very good at maths but useless at learning things by rote. I was good at maths because I could understand the concept and follow the process. I did eventually learn my tables and often use them now. I usually have to start mid table and work from there. E.g 7x7=49 so 6x is 42 and 8x is 56. So I never learnt them like a parrot and I might not have done well in these tests.