What questions should you ask your children to help them remember and learn their tables?

To test our children when learning multiplication tables we usually ask questions all beginning with the word ‘WHAT’.

For example:

What is 6 x 8?

What is 9 x 6?

It seems obvious that asking ‘WHAT’ this is the right thing to ask.

It is ‘a’ right thing to ask, however, there is another question, a very powerful question that can be asked that will aid and massively increase children’s ability in remembering their multiplication tables.

If you want to be the best in life then the thing to do is to learn from those people who are the best at at that thing. We do not need to reinvent the wheel all we need to do is find and copy outstanding people, role models, and learn from what they do.

So if you want to remember something why not use as your role model the very best people that there at remembering. Who are these people? You’ve probably seen these people on TV, they are the memory champions, such as Dominic O’Brian, those who can seemingly effortlessly remember dates, places, people, countless facts, massive lists of objects.

How do they do it and can we learn from them and apply that knowledge to help our children to remember their tables? You bet we can and in a very easy way that will make a huge difference!

Location is the answer!

The way these champions remember is to link the facts, objects etc to a location, to a place. They imagine the fact or object to be at a particular location and if they have to remember a sequence they turn that sequence into a sequence of places or a journey.

These experts then remember the locations or journey and this enables them to recall all those facts.

When learning tables in The Learning Well and Times Table Maths.com, we do not rote learn as most people do because multiplication tables are not learned well this way. If you ask a child a multiplication table, very often the response is to go through all the multiplication tables from the beginning until they get to the one being asked. Have you seen this? We have on countless occasions.

What is needed instead is an instant recall method.

We use the idea of locations and places to help children remember in an instant, in a split second.

So we use printable math sheets that we call Memory Sheets and place them in various locations. Children then remember the location and their multiplication tables easily and with instant recall.

So, coming back to this idea of questions, we said that ‘WHAT’ was ‘a’ right question and now there is another question, a very powerful question to ask, and that is ‘WHERE’?

For your children to learn their tables, questions are definitely the answer to multiplication tables, but not just WHAT, also the very powerful question linked to the idea of location and that is; WHERE?

Children using this method have achieved outstanding results with minimum effort and so can yours! Why not have a look at the rest of the Blog and our free reports to see more on this and why it is so powerful and helping children learn their tables.

Movement is such an important thing and we all know that children are at their happiest when able to move.

However, the logistics of teaching in school means they if they were moving around all the time it would be total chaos and there would be little or no improvement in their numeracy. 

But what about in the home?

The expectation is again that children will sit quietly and get on with learning and homework.

It is really important to realise that this expectation leads to a lack of motivation.

However, the parent at home has a great advantage over the formal setting of the school and that is that children can be encouraged take part in learning strategies that involve moving about. The resultant increased motivation to learn, and to do it for longer periods, greatly increases children’s numeracy.

We have developed a number of systems that use movement as one of the keys to learning and tapping into the increased motivation that this brings.Please feel free to download any of our articles and reports particularly those focused on speaking and movement as the key to improving numeracy.

Children can be walking up and down the room, play acting, anything that gets them using movement. So, the whole process becomes more like play and fun and their motivation is raised and their numeracy significantly improved.

You can create a superb learning environment in the home and outside and by using a combination of movement, learning, and memory techniques, you will be able to see a marked difference in your child’s behaviour, their ability to retain knowledge, and a greatly improved numeracy performance in the classroom.

But that fact is that all motion creates emotion, all movement creates emotion and the focus of this article is to highlight this point and its relevance to children’s education.

Movement is such an important thing, especially for children, and we all know that children are continually in motion, they are always moving around, they are always doing things. Moving is their natural state of being and they are at their happiest when able to move.

However, when at school they are expected to sit at their tables for most of the time and learn. The logistics of teaching in a formal setting means they if they were moving around all the time it would be total chaos.

But what about in the home?

The expectation is that children will sit down quietly and get on with learning just as if they were in school. It is really important to realise this expectation is one of the greatest barriers to children doing work at home and leads to a lack of motivation.

However, the parent at home has a great advantage over the formal setting of the school and that is that children can be encouraged to move about and do things that they can’t do at school.

If movement can be introduced to academic work in the home then the motivation to do the work and to do it for longer periods will be high thereby increasing the rate of learning.

Children at home do not have to be sitting at a table writing and we have developed a number of systems that use movement as one of the keys to learning and tapping into the increased motivation that this brings.

The systems can be used for maths, literacy, writing, speaking and absorbing facts of all sorts.

One such system is Memory Mapping.

Children can do a memory map on the wall or produce it on a chart and just by doing so they have a freedom and an ease which gets them working at peak performance.

We encourage you to have some sort of board or easel up on a wall somewhere and to have plenty of pens available for drawing memory maps. Children love working in this way.

The map uses speaking and movement as the key to their learning. Testing how much children have learned about a subject, place or thing, anything really can be readily gleaned by you enabling you, the parent to interact and provide feedback to your children.

The great thing about speaking it is that it doesn’t have to happen whilst sitting in a chair. Children can be walking up and down the room, moving their arms about, play acting, anything that gets them absorbed in using movement and the memory mapping technique to learn. So, the whole process becomes more like play and as children like to play and have fun their motivation is raised.

To learn more on movement creating emotion and for how to create a brilliant learning environment and experience in the home and outside please do feel free to download any of the Blog and our free reports.