January 13, 2009
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Lately for math time, my three oldest kids, 9, 7, and 5-years-old, sit around listening to stories like:
“A huge tree (three) decided it wanted to skate (eight). At the skating rink, he was having a grand ol’ time when the owner said he had to leave because he was so big and heavy he was leaving dents in the floor (denty floor = twenty four)”
We’ve finished the whole times table in 6 days or so, spending 10 – 20 minutes a day. Now we review the tables once or twice a week to help them get faster at with the facts.
What a fun way to learn math – listening and remembering silly stories. And unlike repeated boring numbers over and over, you’re a lot more likely to remember the denty floor and the big tree in skates.
Here’s the book: Memorize in Minutes : The Times Tables
And the teacher who wrote this book has a website, www.Multiplication.com with tons of great math ideas, games, and more. If you have a student struggling with multiplication, definitely give him a visit.
And to address the skeptics:
Two main objections to this method:
- It doesn’t teach math concepts or what multiplication actually means. You’re right. I teach that separately. This method is strictly an effective way to memorize a fact I want to know without having to calculate it.
- It takes too long – you have to translate numbers into ‘tree’ and ‘skate’, then remember the story, then translate ‘denty floor’ back into 24. Yes, it take a bit longer to start with, but your mind quickly learns and will eventually skip the whole story part and you’ll find the answer immediately jumps to mind. The more silly the story the easier you remember the facts with much less repetition. It’s fun, easy, and much faster.
Posted under Math Curriculum, Math Websites
One of the most useful skills is to memorise the times table, I use it every day. Hard to convince my 9 year old, LOL. Will have a look at the book, thanks for the link.
I can remember crying over those stupid multiplication flash cards…
and STILL to this day have a hard time with the 7Xs and the 8Xs…
*sigh*
This looks like much more fun!
LOL – Funny, but I still have to count to add 7 + 5, 7 + 6, 8 + 5, and 8 + 6 – and a couple of the 7s and 8s in multiplying take me an extra few seconds.
I guess what we learn (and don’t learn well) as a kid sticks with us.
Misty
I put up a video of How To Practice Multiplying by Two with Playing Cards on my blog recently. You might enjoy that way to teach simple multiplication, as well.
It’s a simple way to go beyond rhymes and nurture the relationship of numbers to each other. It might be a nice next step for a child.
Thanks for your interesting blog posts. I’ve just found you, and I’m sure I’ll be back.
Happy teaching!
Brian (a.k.a. Professor Homunculus at MathMojo.com )
This is the same approach as a book called Times Tales, which we used with great success with DS when he was 9.
In Times Tales, instead of words that sound similar to the number, the numbers themselves are personified in images… so, 7 is “Mrs Week” (because there are 7 days in a week) and she’s a big number 7, and she has various adventures… 8 is “Mrs Snowman”… The nice thing about this is that the same characters are used in each story.
9 is the treehouse (because the big number 9 looks like a tree). So, Mrs Snowman went to the Treehouse and and knocked 7 times on the 2 doors. 8×9=72.
Each story is one sentence. They reinforce with visual and aural cues, looking at just pictures and reciting the story from memory, then just reciting the story, then translating it to the math only after everything is memorized.
It literally took less than an hour to do the tables from 6-9. (At that time, it only did the upper tables because the lower ones are easier and don’t usually generate the same level of memory problems, but I think they include some lower ones now).
Anyway, a similar approach with some slight differences. I recommend the approach very highly – and like you said, AFTER they understand the concepts well and just need a little help with the final step of quick and easy recall.
Thanks Brian and Heather! I appreciate the great tips and suggestions.
Misty