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by opsunit
1226 days ago
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I've often wondered how others get the multiplication tables to stick. When I was in school and tasked with learning and being tested on them I remembered them - just about - for long enough to be tested (primarily from a quick reminder on the way to school) and then they were gone. My overall experience was that they were a very boring song with terrible lyrics. I can't ever say that any meaning clicked especially. The teacher called out the first part of the verse and I "sang" it internally and hopefully got it right. Having gotten through that it was gone by lunchtime in time for a different set of words to the same song next week. I tried again about 30 years later as a adult and had much the same experience. You might as well have been asking me to remember items on a tray. To me it's like this: chicken x tree = rock brick x kangaroo = Susan boat x walnut = dinosaur Now imagine you have to remember 288 of those (because you might be asked to produce either side of the equals sign) and somebody asking you to recall one arbitrarily. How do you get your students to get them to stick? |
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https://www.mathmammoth.com/practice/multiplication-table
It's all about practice. For some, it's easier to create something competitive from it. Some of my students really enjoy challenging me, because they are at that age in life where they want to stick it to "the man". So we do 60 second times competition to see who can finish more.
At its core, learning this is boring. Having a benchmark that you work to improve, gamifying it, is the fastest way to improve. It's like typing or exercise, the fundamentals aren't cognitively taxing. I think it's a little harder to practice after you leave school, because there's no math or science class where you would immediately apply and practice what you learned.
There's no general solution that would work for every student, and not every student has the same weakness. The website I linked is genuinely one of my favorites, it's like duolingo for math, for free with no account needed. I think the second link will help build intuition behind the relationship between the numbers. All of the quizzes/games on this site are fantastic.
https://www.mathmammoth.com/practice/sieve-of-eratosthenes
This is fantastic to understand numbers and primes. Start with multiplication/division. Then work with GCF, which is greatest common factor between two or more numbers, for example 24 and 36, 6 * 4 or 12 * 2 == 24 ; 6 * 6 = 36, 12 * 3; so the GCF of 24 and 36 is 12. GCF is a way to practice multiplication/division naturally.
Arithmetic puzzles are also a good way to get some practice where it's not just boring. Fermi questions are as well. There's more advanced algorithms for multiplying things like large numbers in your head, but in my opinion, an estimate is good enough for 99% of real life situations. Fermi questions help build an intuitive math sense that will be applicable to real life situation. For memorizing, using "tricks" is fine, like the 9 multiples all add up, looking at digits, to 9. 9 * 8 is 72 which is 7 plus 2. Multiples below 10 also start with 1 less than the digit that is not 9, so 8 - 1 = 7, and 7_ and the second digit adds up to 9, so 2, 72. I'll leave the rest as an exercise for reader. Good luck.