Help your students learn their times tables
If you teach any grade above 3rd, you’ve likely been frustrated by your students’ inability to do the work in your math class because they don’t know their times tables.
Your students can’t do long division? I bet they don’t know their times tables.
They can’t simplify fractions? I bet they don’t know their times tables.
Struggling with two-step equations? Times Tables.
It’s one of those foundational skills that they absolutely must know. So it’s infuriating that they haven’t learned it.
I make a point of reviewing times tables with my students every day (unless I’m teaching a class where everyone has mastered it, like an honors level class). Even when I’m teaching a middle school or high school level class, we review our times tables every day!
Here are 3 resources to help you review times tables with your students.
1) Whole Class Game
Sparkle is a fun, whole class game. It’s competitive, fast, and everyone gets to participate.
Your students will love it, and be asking you to go over times tables every day.
To learn about this game, you have to listen to my podcast episode on it.
2) Color by Numbers Worksheets
My students love completing these color by numbers worksheets. The image starts totally blank, and then as students correctly color in the squares, the shape is revealed. There’s one worksheet for each number, and students review all of their times tables.
Besides being fun, it gives students immediate feedback. Plus, since they color in so many squares of a multiple of the number, the repetition really helps them master it.
Times Tables Quizzes
I like using a short, bare bones quiz on just the times tables. I set it up so that my students have to correctly solve all of the multiples for one times table, twice, when I quiz them
So if this week we’ve been working on our 2’s. I want to quiz them on 2×1 through 2×9. And I want them to answer each multiple twice. I also throw in a 2×0 and a 2×10 just to give the quiz 20 questions.
Since I couldn’t find that resource online, I made my own.
One Last Recommendation
Don’t stop reviewing times tables!
When I was the director of middle school mathematics for our county’s math teacher coalition, I used to guide the middle school teachers through this line of thinking:
- When do they teach times tables (3rd grade)
- How often do you think your students did their times tables (probably every week for the whole year)
- And how many times table questions do you think they answered in 3rd grade (maybe 1,000? Maybe 2,000? Maybe more).
- Then your students went to fourth grade and had to do double digit addition and fractions. But they couldn’t because they didn’t know their times tables. What do you think their fourth grade teacher did? (reviewed their times tables).
- For how long? (probably for weeks, hundreds of practice problems each week)
- Then they went to fifth grade. More skills that required them to know their times tables, which they didn’t know. Do you think the fifth grade teacher did something similar to what the fourth grade teacher did? (of course).
- Same with sixth grade and seventh grade and so on.
- So for years, your student has been doing hundreds of times table problems every year, and they still haven’t learned it….
- They’re not going to learn it in a short period of time!
It’s going to take repeated, sustained practice. Lots of drills. Lots or repetition. Lots of meaningful effort.
Make times tables practice last year round. Do it every day.
Leave a Reply