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shalteir:

This was a great thread early on, although the mathematical content went up over the head of teachers like myself, in primary.

DM:

shalteir:

This was a great thread early on, although the mathematical content went up over the head of teachers like myself, in primary.

Was that the 7 x 8 = 56 bit?

DM:

shalteir:

This was a great thread early on, although the mathematical content went up over the head of teachers like myself, in primary.

Was that the 7 x 8 = 56 bit?

No, if you read my posts, my contribution was that my Y4s achieved class average scores of just about 100% quick recall of multiplication facts by the summer term, and the lower ability children could then mentally take unrehearsed challenges like 17 x 18 from a school assembly and deliver the correct answer..

Specifically on the 7 x 8 =56 bit, I created this sequence like a games chant which laid the table down in consecutive numbers which remained in the memory: 5,6,7,8; 56=7x8.

Thus, not only knowing it, as a teacher I explored and sometimes created new ways of learning troublesome facts. as a primary teacher I tried to give the children the best foundation before secondary as I could. 

Currently I share Dave Godfrey songs (www.numberfun.co.uk), like "Octopus Takeover", as an angle on learning tables, but mostly I taught from sound maths principles appropriate to the childrens' age. 

 No DM. They would have got 100% if they did not know 5 x 6 = 30.

5,6,7,8;  56 = 7 times 8 The chant does not lend itself to ambiguity. There is no "78".

Not 5 x 6.= 78

Good joke, maybe an insincere straw man joke, but not one LA Y4 ever had a problem with it, and no secondary feedback subsequently from  schools suggested problems in later years. 

Yes, I could be responsible for the chant, or several people hit on it independently. I used it in the 70s, it got around, my LEA adviser for maths shared it on LEA inset in the 80s.

By all means hit me with math's research that suggests secondary pupils generally believe 5 x 6 = 78 as a consequence of this. As someone else posted, most Y2s can do 5 x 6 =30, so I don't know what has happened in secondary education lately if Y11s are getting stuck.

DM if your Y11s can't do 7 x 8, they couldn't take on my former Y4s. Maybe Gove is onto something after all.

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In all seriousness, shalteir, 5 x 6 = 78 is a quite common misconception.   I have encountered it many times.

I have never met a class of children who have all known their multiplication tables.   I have sent students to Cambridge to read mathematics who were iffy about their 7s and 8s (although they could invariably figure them out from other known facts).  

In my totally unscientific survey, I would estimate that at least three quarters of Year 11 students do not know their tables well.   It is not at all unusual for a student who will go on to attain grade C in GCSE mathematics to take several seconds to figure out that 3 x 4 is 12.   Many of them cannot multiply by 10.

What happens to these children after they leave your class?   All the students I have ever met (many thousands) have all told me they never mastered tables in primary/middle school.   The only ones who know them were given additional drill by their parents.