The amount that children now have to learn at school has increased and is now much greater than it used to be. There is pressure for teachers to cover so much, not leaving much time for learning times tables. This means that the parent has to take the initiative and do some of the work in helping their children learn times tables.

When you look around to see what alternatives there are, there just seem to be bewildering and increasing number of ways of learning times tables.
As a parent, this is, at best, confusing; the problem is that you do not really know what works and what does not.The pressures on parents in terms of work and bringing up children mean that parents are time poor and have to decide what to do to help their children with times tables with little knowledge.

The decision reached will have a huge affect on their children’s ability to learn times tables quickly and easily.Making such decisions more difficult is the fact that there are few studies that can be drawn on to help identify the very best methods of learning times tables.

Learning times tables well are a platform on which to build and flourish in mathematics.Get this wrong and your child will struggle at maths, and as a consequence, other school subjects will seem harder.This can then lead to a lack of confidence in mathematics.

In that learning times tables is so important and so many learning options are available, a major question arises; what should you be looking for that will bring success to your children?The goal needs to be to learn the times tables in such a way that children can recall them instantly.

Why? Because the tables are basics of maths. Times tables leads to division, long addition and subtraction, before building up to factorisation, algebra and a whole host of other maths, methods and concepts. This point here is that if you cannot get the simple things right at the start and quickly, then your chances of picking up and understanding new concepts are lessened, as you are spending more brain power recalling the times tables, instead of knowing them instantly and focusing on the next things.

It is important to appreciate this. To do this, try answering these quick questions – What is your name?

Your didn’t have to think about the answer! Now try ‘what is the name of your child or one of your children’?

Were you able to think of the answers as quickly as when you answered the first question? Now try this – What is 8 x 7? Or what about 9 x 8 and 7 x 8. Did you get both answers as quickly as you did your names? That 8 x 7 was switched to 7 x 8. Most people will pause at this. They have the same numbers and same answer, so why should you not know this and be able to answer as quickly? Because time is spent thinking rather then answering the question.

Your children need to know their tables as well as they know their own names. When children can do this then building to a higher level of mathematics becomes much easier for them. To gain a huge advantage in maths children need a method of learning times tables that results in them knowing the answers instantly.

The method that does this is the 100% Instant Recall Method which you can find out all about at Learn Times Tables or Learning Times Tables

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 7th, 2010 at 12:37 pm and is filed under Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.