All children should learn their times tables by age 11

[mikey4444]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31079515

Isn't this from the school of the *** obvious ? When was it not policy that kids should learn their times tables before they go to Secondary school ?

[pixie373]

Lol :-). His calculator is broken.

[Sqad]

Prudie........LOL.

Bloody scientists.

[jim360]

I had fun putting those in deliberately!

[ToraToraTora]

12x8=94? souns like jim would have benefited from a bit of old fashioned learning by rote!

[jim360]

Glad you were all paying attention, then.

[bhg481]

Jim - 8 x 12 = 94? Not when I was a lad.

[ummmm]

Didn't start learning my times tables until middle school aged 9.

The best thing that helped me with adding up and taking away was being the chalker for dart matches.

[jim360]

One of the more bizarre statistics I've seen about times tables is that children seem to find knowing the answer to 6x8 harder than knowing 8x6, despite their being the same. Learning by rote at the very least has to emphasise the properties of multiplication, and the various patterns included, alongside presenting the answers.

There is like I said a lot that's not really correct about mathematics teaching. Too little time is spent on appreciating the importance of knowing how to check your answers, when they make sense and so on. At the basic level of times tables this is still important -- and I think that rote learning overlooks this.

[Slapshot]

There should always be a place for simple arithmetic and spelling. Maths makes it complex therefore having a solid arithmetic background is very valuable. We tried very hard to teach ours and reinforce what the schools did at the time.

I don't believe there anything wrong with learning by rote in fact I'd encourage it, lets be honest we're not going to teach 8, 9 and 10 year olds differentiation, split variable integration or proof of the Cos rule are we, otherwise we'll see Langrangian Equations become standard at o levels. Drum it into them as youngsters they never forget

[jim360]

It's mainly a problem with *pure* rote learning I have. So long as it's supplemented by an appreciation of where these results come from then there's not really a problem. But if that understanding is there then you have people who can confidently recite the answer to 11*12 but then stutter once you move outside the table.

[humbersloop]

also from the school of the bl**ding obvious, has anyone noticed there's a general election in the offing??

what Sally Morgan seems to be proposing is testing kids more, not teaching them better

[roopower]

Don't believe everything you read in the papers!! I worked in 'primary'schools for years and children still learn tables, long division, multiplication, algebra, geometry etc - it's the method of teaching that's changed - and don't blame the teachers either, they're told what to teach from 'on high', people who don't know what they are talking about the majority of the time. They also don't seem to understand that there are some children who will never attain the standards of others, no matter how they are taught, how long they are taught or who teaches them. Wow! I've got that off my chest.

[pixie373]

Well said, roo.

[roopower]

Slapshot, when my two twenty somethings were studying for GCSEs, I was told by their maths teacher that what he was teaching them was once A level stuff and what he taught at A level used to be degree level. Things have changed a great deal.

[Zacs-Master]

I never really learnt mine.

[jim360]

Then again, things also have gone in the other direction, and material that used to be O-Level is A-level now. Standards are changing, rather than slipping.

[roopower]

Thanks pixie, it's a subject I get very het up about! Having seen the amount of forest that appeared in schools in the shape books of new ideas from on high which were replaced by even more forests a year or two later, it's a wonder to me that teachers can even begin to keep up with what they're supposed to be doing and how.

[Slapshot]

Jim you can only teach what kids have the capacity to learn, while times tables with numbers is simple to pick up getting them to understand that a+b=b+a or axb=bxa is not so simple... I get what you are saying but as a father of two, now grown up kids, seeing the way learnt has given me a few ideas on the way that seems logical

[jim360]

I have some teaching experience myself, including at all levels of High School. So far I've only been an assistant rather than an actual teacher, so I'm sure I have a lot still to learn about how to teach!

[Slapshot]

Roo, you're not wrong, experienced that with our son, stuff he was doing at Standard grade was stuff I got taught at higher and the old Scottish sixth Year Studies certificate level, physics and chemistry stuff mostly. It's a changing world and the demands constantly change but you have to give the little kids at primary/junior school level a proper grounding in the basics