Monday discussion 17th August- Times tables

Just reading through this discussion thread reminded me of a boy I was tutoring, about 10 years old, who had learnt all his times tables by rote. He didn’t know them one week and by the next week he did! He had clearly worked really hard to learn them and it did make a difference to his confidence as he was now able to answer questions in a test that he couldn’t previously. His teacher at school was also happy as well as his mum. He could answer them all very quickly and did really times tables tests, etc. He struggled in everything else in Maths. It was really helpful that he knew them so well when we looked at adding and subtracting fractions, worked on formal multiplication, etc.

However, what was also really clear after just a couple of weeks was that he had absolutely no idea what these facts related to. Occasionally, he forgot a fact. He was unable to use other facts to work out the forgotten fact because they were just things that he had learnt. I had to go back to the beginning and research him what multiplication was, the relationship between facts, etc. In some ways, his knowledge of being able to recall facts meant that it held him back further than for other children that I tutor who don’t know all their facts but are able to use the ones they know to work out other facts as those that don’t know them are more flexible with their thinking and use the links between them, all of which is far more beneficial for future learning.