Hi Everyone!

This is a page to share ideas to show how to teach multiplication and division to primary school children, as well as lots of other area of the maths curriculum.

I have been trialling and improving these ideas in my own classroom since Spring Term 2017.

The Big Idea

As a KS2 teacher (currently in Year 4) I have found it a total nightmare trying to keep on top of times tables in my class. Very few children seemed to know any of their times tables, even the 2s, 5s and 10s which they should grasp by the end of year 2. They certainly weren't confident with the associative division facts or derived facts, let alone able to answer scaling, ratio or 'combination' word problems.

Not only this, but the children all seemed to be on different targets and it was impossible to sort the admin to help them practise or to provide them with the test they needed.

Coverage

Another big issue with teaching today is the sheer amount of objectives. It seems almost impossible to fit them into the year. However, when you break down the objectives, you will see that multiplication and division knowledge is required for children to be able to understand LOTS of them. (Please see the highlighted yellow and green on the sheets here.) Therefore, if you can ensure you are making clear links to multiplication and division when teaching all of the yellow objectives, children will gain a far more solid understanding. You may also wish to do a 15 minute starter that is explicitly to do with multiplication and division linked to the objective.

The green objectives can be removed and taught in the 20 minute slot a week.

How

So to summarise, the idea is to do 3 things:

1) make links with multiplication and division in your normal maths teaching whenever possible

2) explicitly teach the times table/s you are working on once a week

3) follow the long term planning in your weekly sessions so that you ensure all children know the required times tables for their year group

To explain point 1 in more detail: as set out in schemes such as White Rose, 4-6 weeks are allocated to teach multiplication and division, which in Year 4 involves the children knowing all their times table facts, associative division facts and derived facts. This is, of course, impossible. Therefore, I have looked at the objectives for Years 1-6 and have highlighted in yellow all of those which explicitly link to multiplication and division. This link needs to be made very clear when teaching these objectives. The ones in green can be removed completely and covered in the 20 minute slots mentioned on point 2)

To explain point 2 in more detail: the idea is to have a weekly 20 minute slot put aside to work on specific times table targets (see long term planning). This is where you could explore strategies, look at rules etc. More ideas can be found here.

Finally, point 3: in order to cut down on admin, the idea is to follow the long term planning to focus on specific times tables each week that you need to learn in each year group. If you use anything such as TT Rockstars, you can set the schedule to match this. You can also set homework or MyMaths to focus on the same tables.

Bye for now!

I will continue to add to this site and will also include any resources that I have found along the way from White Rose and other places.

Hope it's useful.

Truependous Times Tables

Email l.truepenny@gmail.com for more info