anyone else have a 4th grader in MCPS who can't quickly rattle off multiplication facts?
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Anonymous
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My kid can't do it as fast as I could as a kid, and his teacher reports that a number of kids are still struggling with this. I'm convinced it's because the new curriculum really didn't teach the basic facts the way we all learned them way back when. I remember doing math races/flashcard competitions every day when I was a kid at the end of each math class (catholic school --- sink or swim, that sort of competition was encouraged). My kid does well in school (not gifted, but straight Ps, FWIW), and he can figure out the answer within a few seconds by adding/counting --- but he can't rattle off SOME of the multiplication facts the way most of us could within a split second.
Just curious if anyone else has a kid in a similar boat --- or if it's just our school (which is not a Title 1 school by any stretch of the imagination). |
Anonymous
| I tutored a rising 5th grader in how tomultiply fractions but her lack understanding about how to multiply made that difficult so we dialed it back to focus on memorizing basic multiplication facts. |
Anonymous
| What are multiplication facts? I don't think I can either. |
Anonymous
They used to be called "times tables." |
Anonymous
| What's important is that your kid has strategies and can figure it out. If he sits there and has no idea, that's a problem. For example, he probably gets stuck on 6x9. But he can figure out pretty quickly that 6x10 is sixty, so 6x9 is is 6 less. That's 54. You want him to be able to see those relationships. |
Anonymous
| Yes, but once he understands the relationships, you also want immediate and confident recall. |
Anonymous
| My DCs went to private school at that age and it was the responsibility of parents to drill multiplication facts. That being said, one of my kids knows them cold based on looking at them once. The other barely knows them after hours of drilling and quizzing. OP maybe it's your kid and not the school? |
Anonymous
| This can easily be drilled at home. |
Anonymous
| MoCo 4th grade teacher here, and I'm not at a Title 1 either. Many of my students still struggle with this, but I don't think it is because of the curriculum. I've taught 4th grade on level math, as well as 5th grade math to 4th graders (so "advanced math"), and in both cases, students struggled with basic facts. I think it's pretty normal, unfortunately, regardless of math instruction in the classroom. |
Anonymous
| I practiced multiplication facts with my daughter. She's very good at math, but helping her memorize those facts for instant recall was one of the most painful parenting experiences I've ever gone through. |
Anonymous
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I got my 3rd grader a set of wrap-ups to help her learn her times tables. They're self-checking, which removes me and my frustration from the equation.
http://www.amazon.com/Multiplication-Wrap-Up-Keys-no-LWUK103/dp/B0007P95JA |
Anonymous
| Yes it is the school. Multiplication tables have to be drilled at school. We also played games back when I was in public school. For each row of the tables we would have a race to see who could recall all the facts for that row (e.g. I was the champion of the "4" row). They don't do anything like this at school and that is why kids struggle. Dadsworksheets dot com have good drill sheets and are free. Sadly, it is parents' responsibility now, but it should be practiced. No kid should have to sit there and reason it out after 4th grade. |
Anonymous
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The problem is the MCPS don't require that multiplication facts be memorized...as one of the PPs wrote:
What's important is that your kid has strategies and can figure it out. If he sits there and has no idea, that's a problem. For example, he probably gets stuck on 6x9. But he can figure out pretty quickly that 6x10 is sixty, so 6x9 is is 6 less. That's 54. You want him to be able to see those relationships. |
Anonymous
| My second grader knows her multiplication table up to 11 right now. I do feel that math is no longer a priority in MCPS. I have been really disappointed. So I've been the one to teach her. |
Anonymous
| I have 2 kids that went thru MCPS and my observation is that they teach basic addition and then move on to algebra, lol. Not really but they push nonsense in 1-3rd instead of the basics. They barely spend time on math facts, money, word problems, percentages, fractions. Things the kids really need. My daughter went accelerated and is currently in honors algebra in 7th. She STILL sucks at basic math. They pushed her right thru it. It is like common sense math is all gone these days. |