Sacha wrote:
My 7 year old came home with homework last week where he had to learn his 2
times table. Which was interesting, because although he knew the maths and
the numbers, he had no concept of the whole "no twos are zero, one two is
two, etc" phrasing/chanting of it.
When I was about 4 or 5 I went to a small school where we used to chant
our tables first lesson every morning. I know it's considered the
'wrong way' now (or is it?) but that method certainly made the tables
stick in the mind. To this day, I recall my tables easily.

There was a huge difference between how I was taught in my first primary
school (in merseyside) and the one I went to for 18 months when we moved (in
Cambridge).

At my first school, we never really /did/ times tables. They taught us more
the maths behind it, how to work it out, but there wasn't a real emphasis on
maths at all at that school (other than I got some extra lessons by a keen
teacher, cos I was actually 'good' at maths) - there was a lot of emphasis
on English, specifically on reading and comprehension.

At my second school, when I was 10, there was a lot of stuff that I hadn't
learnt which was assumed knowledge. It was really quite bewildering. I
didn't have the instant recall of times tables, but I knew how to get to
them ... so I couldn't do the instant answer to 'what is 6 times 7' (eg -
and I still can't now! 6, 7, and 8 all fox me!), but I could work out the
answer, and I could expand on that to work out /any/ answer, outside of the
1-10 (or 1-12?) that everyone else could.

So I guess what is /really/ needed is a happy medium, where you can use the
instant recall to apply to the more general method, if that makes sense.
Unfortunately there seems to be only so much one can cram into a little
brain at a time!

(perhaps I should start playing times table tapes to the boys at night
instead of the Gruffalo!)