Multiplication Tables - should they learn them by rote, or not?
If this image makes you shudder, roll your eyes or let out an exasperated sigh, you’re not alone.
There’s always a lot of noise around how kids should learn their ‘times tables’, so let’s cut through the confusion.
Should your child learn their multiplication facts by rote … or is there a better way?
Firstly, I’ve written about this before, and you can read that here, but there needs to be understanding over memorization.
“Multiplication tables have traditionally been learnt in a block by repeated practice. This form of blocked practice has several limitations associated with trying to learn an ordered list of facts.” (Rohrer 2009)
If there is no understanding of what 6 x 4 means, for example, then knowing it’s 24 won’t help in the long run.
If they don’t understand it, they can’t use it to solve other questions, to use it for division, to apply it in other situations.
If there is no understanding, memorising the tables is the equivalent of learning a page of phone numbers in the White Pages… (If you’re not sure what that is/was, you may need to google it). They become “verbal memories” (Butterworth et al. 2003), random facts that just need to be remembered. This puts a lot of pressure on your child and it’s hard.
but … rote learning/memorisation builds speed and fluency. This is why it’s so it is important that they do learn them - and learn them so well that they can pull out answers without resorting to charts, fingers, rattling off the whole set, or rattling off the sequence of answers. Knowing them this well allows your child to quickly recall the facts, which allows their brains to work on more complex problem solving.
Kids who don’t know their multiplication facts really well, spend so much energy getting the answer to the multiplication fact, they don’t have the brain power left to know what to do with it in the question/problem they are trying to solve.
To be fluent takes time and practice - at school AND at home - but rather than buy a chart, stick it up somewhere and expect them to learn the facts by osmosis, they need to build the facts, make them, read them, explain them. They need to use them.
Another thing to consider … overemphasis can cause anxiety. The pressure to memorise without context may lead to anxiety or disengagement, especially for students who struggle with recall. If they feel it is too hard, and there is too much to learn all at once, they often ‘switch off’, which is why saying “Go and learn your tables” gets the response it gets.
For other skills our children learn, we do it in slow, measured steps. We don’t expect our child to start learning to read and then be able to pick up War and Peace straight away. They don’t start to walk and end up in the 100m final running against Gout Gout the next week. There are steps - MANY of them - in between, so when it comes to the multiplication facts, and the associated division facts, we need to break it down into manageable steps. This resource, which focuses on fact families, might help get you started.
The more students think about multiplication facts as part of related fact families, the more likely they are to remember them later. “Thinking about meaning is much more effective for getting material into memory than thinking about other aspects of the content.” (Willingham 2008)
Learning multiplication facts as related ‘fact families’ produces opportunities for mixed practice. Rather than learning 2 × 5 and 5 × 2 as parts of two separate sets of multiplication tables learnt at separate times, they learn them as related facts, which gives them more meaning.
And of course, individual learning styles matter. Some kids thrive with repetition, while others benefit more from other methods like games or manipulatives. You know your child best, so you already have an advantage. Just because ‘little Johnny” down the street learnt his by rote, doesn’t mean that that is the best way for your child. You know what will work best for them.
So, in summary … you guessed it … a balanced approach is often best. Combining rote with visual models, patterns, and real-world applications can reinforce both recall and comprehension.
But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter which learning style is your child’s preferred style, they’re going to need your help, and I can help you with all of it.
