Says my 5 yo in year one who now thinks maths is having to remember how to recite the two times table 😕

Thankfully I should be able to teach him what maths really is and how much fun it can be. Though quite surprised they still do this in schools.

what maths really is and how much fun it can be

I managed to get all the way through school and an engineering degree without finding maths remotely fun, any tips?

Times tables? Pretty fundamental maths stuff there, which all kids get taught at school. How do you imagine you can do the “fun” stuff without knowing that?

I’m sure you know better than the teachers at school though.

I’m sure you know better than the teachers at school though.

Times tables? Pretty fundamental maths stuff there, which all kids get taught at school. How do you imagine you can do the “fun” stuff without knowing that?

By not being the sort of person who learns things by rote.

I’ve got a degree in electronic engineering without learning any anything other than a 10x table.

I blagged it in Primary School and have been doing mental arithmetic every time somebody asks me 8×7 etc.

to remember how to recite the two times table

Times tables? Pretty fundamental maths stuff there

I can see how the former is boring and dull, the latter can be interesting.

There is a big difference between reciting the tables, and fundamentally understanding them.

As a kid I hated ‘learning’ times tables, I recited them along with everyone else, and saying it out in order I could get it right.

Fire a question at me like “what’s 7×6?” and I’d get cold sweats and forget because it wasn’t in sequence. In my head I’d run through the recital until I got to the right bit in order to answer, I really wasn’t doing any maths at that point, I was remembering a string of words.

It wasn’t until I understood why 7×6=42 that I was then able to answer quickly, and the realisation that I was then able to answer questions beyond where we had recited to was incredibly empowering even as a kid, I could actually do the math (amazing I know!!!).

I can pretty much pinpoint that as the moment when I started to understand, it carried me through to a Maths and Further Maths A Level and a Masters degree in Physics, but I still know people who can answer in a split second from memory, until you ask them to answer outside of what they remember, they still can’t do actual arithmetic properly as adults and can’t do basic life stuff like work out change or percentages for tips, convert units etc. but ask them whats 7×6 and they’ll answer ’42’…

Remembering how to recite them is neither fun nor learning the maths.

I’ve got a degree in electronic engineering without learning any anything other than a 10x table.

Sparky in only knowing 1s and 0s only shocker

😉

There is a big difference between reciting the tables, and fundamentally understanding them.

Yes, mostly this.

I wasn’t the sort of kid in primary school that learnt things well by rote and as such was told I’d never be good at maths, which thankfully turned out to be bollocks.

Remembering how to recite them is neither fun nor learning the maths.

My kid would agree on the first part, and unfortunately thinks this is learning maths.

Times tables are the educational hot topic du jour, ours have just had to learn all of theirs by age 8 and will sit a national test on them later on.

Times tables are the educational hot topic du jour, ours have just had to learn all of theirs by age 8 and will sit a national test on them later on.

Didn’t realise it was a hot topic at the moment, what’s been going on?

Is that test supposed to evaluate their understanding or recall?

Times tables are the educational hot topic du jour, ours have just had to learn all of theirs by age 8 and will sit a national test on them later on.

Blimey. What sort of questions do they get asked?

Didn’t realise it was a hot topic at the moment, what’s been going on?

This sort of stuff –
https://www.theschoolrun.com/new-primary-school-times-tables-tests-explained

In year 4 they have been learning all the times tables up to 12x and have monthly tests were they can earn badges, starting with bronze badge for 2x, 5x and 10x etc up to gold for all of them.
every week his homework instead of being varied now always includes a page of times tables for him to complete.

evaluate their understanding or recall?

Recall.

It is a problem, basically countless kids lose all interest in maths because they don’t know what it’s for, then by the time they start to see what it’s for they’ve already dropped or done badly in maths. I mean, it’s boring as **** so no wonder but it’s also still pretty unapplied and can feel pretty directionless.

I used to think that knowing the times tables was pointless, because I could work them out quickly in my head and I did ok.

Then I taught an adult* GCSE resit evening class and I could see the difference it made when a student knew their tables. I realised that I could cope without because I was quite clever and ‘good’ at maths.

When learning how to work with fractions, etc life is so much simpler of you ‘just know’ the answers to times tables:

The number of objects an average human can hold in working memory is 7±2. Essentially: if you don’t know your tables, 6×7 takes up two of these slots; if you do, it takes up one. It’s equivalent to phonetically decoding every word on a page, rather than simply recognising the whole word.

This realisation changed my opinion of rote learning, and especially times tables.

*a class for adults, not an ‘adult’ class

It is a problem, basically countless kids lose all interest in maths because they don’t know what it’s for, then by the time they start to see what it’s for they’ve already dropped or done badly in maths.

Maths at school is a bit of a weird one, and I can’t help thinking far too much emphasis is placed on it. A lot of the stuff taught in later years is of extremely limited use in real life. I used mine for a physics degree, and then entered the real world and found I didn’t need it and have since forgotten it all.

How many people actually solve quadratic equations, and do differentiation/integration in real life?

How many people actually solve quadratic equations, and do differentiation/integration in real life?

I think that’s a big part of the problem when learning. There’s no notion of any sort of application, so kids sit there thinking “this is pointless.”

I’ve seen logic puzzles where someone comes along and goes “ah, this is a quadratic equation” or some other sort of half-remembered GCSE maths and provides an elegant solution; that approach would never have even remotely occurred to me because I was never given any sort of context as to how or why that knowledge might be useful.

The only thing I’ve actually used as an adult is Pythagoras for working out roof blind measurements. Ashamed to admit that a calculator, excel or google does everything else

I use GCSE maths all the time, but I do teach A level physics so…

The whole “must have a C” thing is stupid – the maths needed to get a D is all that you’d need in everyday life.

We have an app which does the times tables to modern pop songs. Daughter quite likes it. Seven times table to the tune of Happy by Farrel is pretty catchy 😆

Of course – I’ve no idea how my kids learn them at their school, though I expect there is at least an element of simply learning by rote (I very much doubt that’s all there is to it – having been inside classrooms during lessons at my kids’ school, the kids have almost always seemed engaged with interesting stuff). Fundamentally though however you learn them, it’s really useful going forwards to be able to instantly know what 7×6 is or what 5×9 is, and learning by rote is one way to manage that. The standard thing at our school seems to be test sheets where they have a number of timed multiplication questions (a random mix rather than a list of times tables).

As for using maths, yes I have used fairly advanced maths as part of my job, but then I worked in engineering.

Board games with more than one dice worked well for us, especially when we started taking it in turns to ‘cheat’ and get caught out by the other ones who did the maths faster/better

It does take a while to get used to saying things like 3 + 4 is ….7, but he started catching on much quicker than if we had sat down and said “Lets do some maths practice”

Sort of think if early stage maths teaching hasn’t been sorted by now then it’s not getting sorted. At least not as a uniform, tractable method that works for the majority of kids.

Educators have cracked reading and writing ISTM – grapheme / phoneme approach seems to work for most and work quite rapidly. Could be that a comparable learning approach for maths just isn’t feasible.

My five year old is enjoying a lot of the topmarks.co.uk maths games on the iPad.

Maths is now a bedtime treat!

Hmmm… Having an Arts Degree and Postgrad but I actually use maths quite a lot in my job.
Being able to use numbers and manipulate them makes so many things in life easier.
Small admission – when doing my A-levels I amused my teachers by coming bottom in pure and top in applied when we took the mock exams.

My five year old is enjoying a lot of the topmarks.co.uk maths games on the iPad.

Cool, thanks.

without finding maths remotely fun, any tips?

As I think has probably been said. Board games, card games, ipad games, puzzles, real world applications in stuff that they are interested in. That was the sort of thing I had in mind. Did a bunch of “maths” with my boy the other day just messing about with a tape measure and a ruler.

Thankfully I should be able to teach him what maths really is and how much fun it can be. Though quite surprised they still do this in schools.

It’s probably worth remembering that he’s younger than the age at which kids start school in many other countries, who do better than us educationally. I reckon the advice for card games, measuring and weighing etc is the way to go.

https://www.khanacademy.org is worth a look too. Lots of good maths stuff on there at every level including early years.

Which is fine, but it’s still really useful to be able to instantly recall basic multiplication, which is what learning the tables is all about.

Which is fine, but it’s still really useful to be able to instantly recall basic multiplication, which is what learning the tables is all about.

Is it though? I still have to work it out but takes me a fraction of a second. I never found it to be a problem (… at least once out of primary school 😉 ) and I did and engineering degree and use a fair bit of maths as part of my job.

I still have to work it out but takes me a fraction of a second

Yeah, but I bet when you work it out you still use rote multiplication.

For example, I always had a bit of a mental block around the 7 and 8 tables, so if I wanted say 7 x 7 then mentally I’d go “Right the 5s table is easy and I know 5×7 are 35. So start there add 7, 43, add 7, 49.”

(Incidentally pretty similar approach to the “partitioning” technique that they now teach for addition and subtraction).

Remembering how to recite them is neither fun nor learning the maths.

Well I remember learning my times tables and thought it was great fun. I’m not sure why people think it’s not learning maths either; whilst it is not per se learning maths, I would argue it is more fundamental than knowing the alphabet. Essentially I agree with aracer-

Times tables? Pretty fundamental maths stuff there, which all kids get taught at school. How do you imagine you can do the “fun” stuff without knowing that?

I’m confused as to why he was accused of trolling. Although 5 does seem young.
Mathematics is essential to nearly everything we do and I think the teaching of maths suffers from the perceived need to instruct children in maths skills and routines(for employment), rather than in its beauty and ability to understand the world around us.
The inktober thread has been most enjoyable. You’ve not had people saying, what’s the point of art at school unless you’re going to be a painter and decorator, or, all you need to learn is colouring in…
There are fewer greater thrills for me than solving a tricky maths problem and I love it 🙂
Apologies for the semi-incoherent rant(?)

Oh, and I would highly recommend the numberphile videos on YouTube for some inspirational maths.

My 5 year old nearly amazed me a few months ago. He said “Daddy, some people think that infinity is the biggest number but it’s not even a REAL number!”. I was just about to buy him a car or something when it all came crashing down “Anyway, the biggest real number is a TRILLION!”.

Oh well.

How exactly do you work it out? I’m assuming you’re not managing to add 8 lots of 9 together to work out 8×9 in a fraction of a second? (though interestingly if you were, you’d be doing the 9 times table – even times tables are interesting!)

FWIW I love maths* and my kids appear to as well – I do seem to remember not enjoying learning times tables all that much because I don’t particularly enjoy rote learning, but I’m incredibly glad I don’t have to apply any conscious thought process to basic multiplication.

* one of the answers to what would I do if I won the lottery is do a maths degree – for fun!

* one of the answers to what would I do if I won the lottery is do a maths degree – for fun!

Btw, the OU courses are very good. I got about halfway through one before kids came along. Hopefully pick it up again when they are older and I’ve a bit more free time.

managed to get all the way through school and an engineering degree without finding maths remotely fun, any tips?

Fermi tasks

A friend of mine at work is doing an OU maths degree – he’s enjoying it too. I enjoyed mine 20 years ago but I’m definitely too thick now.

I teach mine in the local with a dart board, 2 pints of cordial & some pork scratchings

Win win

By the end of Year 2 they should be able to do 2, 5 and 10s. Year 3 – 3, 4 and 8. Year 4 is pretty much the rest.

At my school we know that it’s an objective that the children should meet, but we don’t spend much time learning them in school. We concentrate on them understanding the maths before they just know the times tables. They practise timestables at home and know that they help them to do other mental maths tasks quicker.

All our maths lessons are based around a key question (something practical in the real world, but not immediately answerable). The children come up with ideas of the skills they think they should sharpen to answer the question. We then mould that in to what they actually need to learn (from a NC objective). They seem to enjoy them it.

Our current question is to do with presenting data on some research they’re carrying out. It’s all about line graphs and timetables (the timetable link being a bit more tenuous!).

As for learning times tables in a fun way, there are loads of games and apps that lead to rewards or completing a part of a game by answering times tables questions correctly.

I don’t blame him, maths is shit.