Where can my child learn their times tables?
Times tables
This is a good question that many parents face. These days, with so much packed into the Australian curriculum and both parents working, finding time to help your children learn their times tables is hard. Often, the teachers will send it home with their homework as ‘an extra’. Combine this with frazzled parents, frazzled kids, it is a recipe for disaster.
Times tables help is at hand.
Don’t despair… The Lime Zone has seen this gap and purpose-designed an eight week times table class which runs each school term. We offer the course on either a Monday morning (7:00 am to 8:00 am) or Friday afternoon (3:30 pm to 4:30 pm) and will do a drop-off / pick-up if your child attends either Clayfield College or Eagle Junction schools. Parents drop and collect children from other schools.
Detail on the course can be found from our times tables information and booking page.
But what if my kids only want to practise them?
We also run a times tables games class on Friday mornings (7:00 am to 8:00 am) where we get the students to practise their times tables through game play. This is designed more for those students who ‘almost’ know them but just need a little more practise. It is lots of fun.
So what are you waiting for? Book into our next times tables course ASAP.
Benefits of learning times tables early
I find that students who know their times tables early have more confidence in their numeracy skills and do much better in maths as they get older.
In addition, students who know their times tables also quickly learn the inverse relationship… that is that the opposite of multiplication is division. For example, 3 x 4 = 12 and 12 ÷ 3 = 4 or 12 ÷ 4 = 3. These two fundamental elements of numeracy then form the basis of more advanced mathematics. As the students get older, they will be expected to use their basic skills to start the problem before moving onto using more advanced mathematical concepts to finish the problem. If they struggle with their basic skills, they often miss key advanced concepts and maths becomes a lifelong battle.
But can’t they just use a calculator?
Whilst calculators have their place, a student who knows their times tables off by heart will be much quicker at doing their maths and have a better understanding. An experiment I sometimes do is get students to pair off and have one student answer ten times tables questions by rote (clearly they need to know their times tables to do this) and another use a calculator. I have yet to come across a student using a calculator who can beat the student who knows them off by heart.
Helpful links to resources:
- The importance of memorising the times tables
- Why kids need to rote learn their times tables (a parent’s perspective)
And as a qualified teacher I still firmly believe that the times tables are one of the areas of maths where students still need to rote learn them. Learning numeracy strategies is good but deep learning the basic numeracy strategies is fundamental.
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