# What’s the most effective ways of teaching kids – times tables?

I’d like to help a $6$ year old who already has a pretty good grasp of $2$, $5$, and $10$ times tables.

## Answer

I’m guessing you are looking for a hard data research answer, but unfortunately, the studies I know of are dubious, partly because they rely heavily on learning style myths, partly because some are funded by commercial parties pushing particular systems.

However, I can give some general advice —

• Give the system for the 9s that the digits add to 9, let your pupil fiddle with the patterns, and they tend to get this one fairly quickly.

• Asian countries do fairly well with a “musical” or “chant” method. I’ve heard of a couple commercial products, including Times Table Rap.

• Play with the visual representation using marbles or tokens, especially so the pupil can understand why 3 x 7 is the same as 7 x 3.

• The “circle” method of visualizing skip counting (samples of what I mean here) can be brought in to help with understanding the “rotating” nature of counting on the times tables.

• There are a fair number of games that help multiplication table prowess, either intentionally or unintentionally. Yahtzee in particular naturally covers the 1-6 portion of the table. I’ve written a game myself, although I don’t know how well it would work with 6 year olds.

• While I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the DS game itself, check out how Professor Kageyama’s Maths Training: The Hundred Cell Calculation Method mixes up the columns and rows of the times table to force students to think about the arrangement.

Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Umber Ferrule , Answer Author : Jason Dyer