Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Help with memorizing multiplication tables

I cannot figure my 8yo son out. Trying to memorize multiplication tables and we are getting nowhere. He's frustrated and I am frustrated. He understands the concept of multiplication. What really confuses me are his WISC scores. On the quantitative reasoning subtest on the WISC V...he scored in the 97th percentile (91 math 98 figure weights). All other areas he scored in the 99.9-99th. Shouldn't he excel in math facts?

He scored average in wmi and low in processing speed... according to his psychologist this may have been due to boredom, disinterest and exhaustion. Due to this behavior and some avoidance she provisionally diagnosed him with anxiety and possible ADHD. Could this be the cause of his difficulty? How can I help him with memorization? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Try Times Tales.

http://www.timestales.com

It worked for my son. I have a more detailed post about it under recommended resources.

Just wanted to say that my DS8 has similar math scores to your kid, and he hates rote memorization of math facts. However, his reasoning ability is very high. Math is really about reasoning, anyways, so fluency doesn't matter a great deal if you don't ultimately have the reasoning skills. We figure the facts will come over time.

He might enjoy the Beast Academy books (my kid loves them). 3B has a section on clever ways of practicing multiplication.

My daughter had troubles at first. She learned through song and it was easy after that.

I think it's common for bright math students to love the deep understanding type tasks (for example, dive into the concept of multiplication and figuring out the answers) and get bored with memorization. Still, they need to know math facts to do more complex math without getting tripped up.

Does he need to know right away?

I have a DS7 that also tested gifted in math areas but has average WMI and low processing speed. He's great at math, but not fast. So, he really needs to know math facts and I also really tried to help him, but I've stopped doing that for now.

When he was 5 I told him he had to memorize addition/subtraction before I would teach him to multiply. He sat on the bench at K recess and taught himself his full multiplication tables by himself. :P So, he knew multiplication better than addition for a while. Ugh!

What finally worked was to just have him do a lot of addition and subtraction. Time and time again. Eventually he (mostly) knew it. Dreambox, IXL, there were a few competitive addition practice games on the ipad where he'd race against us to do addition and subtraction. Sheer practice and he had it. He would not sit down and memorize it though and we had to stop asking after it started to make him dread math.

Maybe you can come at it from several angles and just see what clicks? Good luck!

I also think the Beast Academy suggestion may click with him... the tricks for memorizing some of the multiplication tables are neat.

My son did Beast Academy, so he learned his times tables before they taught it in school. If you go to their website and click 'printables' there are free times tables and mixed times tables you can print out. After my son filled these out, he seemed to pretty much get it.

My daughter isn't old enough yet, but I plan to teach her this way when the time comes, too. I don't necessarily trust the common core math methods they are using at their school. Beast Academy explains multiplication in a fun way with cartoons and then the worksheets seemed to make it all click, at least for my son. In fact, he's commented that he's quicker with his multiplication and division facts than with his addition and subtraction facts. I thank Beast Academy for that.