I don’t know about you, but one memory from elementary school that definitely stands out was learning math facts. Over and over we had to practice our times tables so that we knew them cold.
It seems that these days, between the increased curriculum demands, limiting the time teachers can spend focusing helping kids learn their times tables, and the ease of using calculators, many children are not learning this vital life skill.
For kids who struggle with focus and attention, learning the times tables can be especially challenging. Not only is the very nature of having to learn these facts boring, the need for endless repetition makes the task often excruciating to endure. Add to this their often slower processing speed and weaker working memory and the whole process can become daunting.
Years ago I discovered Times Tales©, a creative, innovative mnemonic-based program that makes it fun and easy to memorize the upper multiplication facts. Each of the numbers 6 though 9 becomes a character. Using short, simple stories to provide students with a “memory peg”, each multiplication fact is taught. The story allows kids to quickly recall the otherwise abstract facts.
