When you’ve practiced with your kids for days and weeks on end and they still forget the answers to times tables, it might be a signal its’ time for a new approach. Kids with learning disabilities force us to be creative. They’ve taught us that not everyone can memorize by simple repetition. Their brains need some substance to hook the answers to, so when they’re searching through the brain’s file cabinet they know what heading to look under. The answers to times tables can be tied to a simple story and cartoon. For example, to teach 6x6, the story tells of twin sixes crossing the desert. The picture shows drooping and tired sixes with their tongues hanging out crossing a lonely and hot desert, finally they reach an oasis and drink the water. They are very thirsty sixes which sounds like the answer to 6x6, thirty-six. Or how about Bart who can’t wait to turn 16 so he can drive his 4x4 and go hang gliding. To view more stories like this click on www.citycreek.com and then Times Tables the Fun Way.
Re: throw away the flash cards
For my program, I have thrown away the flashcards and the stories. I outfit the students with a multiplication chart and start in. I expect my students to use the chart, this way they practice the facts correctly, rather than the heretofore tendency to practice most facts incorrectly for tens or hundreds of times incorrectly, creating a monster that is hard to tame. I find that when I use this approach, they do start learning many facts, over time.
Re: throw away the flash cards
thanks for saying that. i’ve tried to get my son’s teacher to just let him have the table. he has serious memory deficits and beating him over the head with “memorization by repetition” or any other method is pointless. i have been told though “it would not be fair to the other students” and “there is no other way other than to memorize them.” teacher just doesn’t get it. do you know of any documented proof i may use to hammer this method home?
Re: throw away the flash cards
Get it written into the IEP as an accomodation, hold your ground and insist. Tell the teacher everytime he gets a fact wrong he is further reinforcing the WRONG answer, getting further and further away from learning the facts correctly.
Practice makes permanent, not perfect...(and a plug for anot
Practice makes permanent. Guessing the wrong one just undoes all the practice the kiddo has done.
A times tables chart is a sort of “industry standard” accommodation (easier to justify than a calculator, too).
Another approach to learning them is to get the number sense to learn the easy ones (coiunting by twos, tens and fives after you’ve learned the 1’s and 0’s, for starters) and figure out the rest, a la Dr. Chinn’s book _Tools for the Times Tables_ — info on that at my website (‘cause I ‘translated’ it from Brit to American English) www.resourceroom.net.
Thanks for this post - I was wondering how to work with my son on his times tables this summer! How timely! :)
Lil