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seren_dipity:

I feel genuine anger on behalf of my pupils - the unlucky ones whose academic abilities are so horribly limited by today's teaching methods.

I agree with what you say, but I'd add that I think it's not only your strugglers who suffer from these methods.

Able children suffer as well, they're not stretched, they don't retain stuff reliably, and they aren't strong enough on the basics to tackle the more challenging stuff.

The 'quality' OFSTED see is often a joke ; I recall my daughter's friend (who is bright) showing me her French Oral Exam practice, consisting of learning by rote the questions and answers, literally. One of the reasons I pay for my daughter to go private is they do not do this kind of cheap exam dodging - they teach in a fairly old fashioned way. If OFSTED don't like it, I don't care.

bgy1mm:

That has now been destroyed.

Yes, it has be an ongoing campaign unfortunately going over several threads. A sad reflection on the so called professionals involved. Reminds me of a New Year fox hunt. Tally Ho!

To say that all ofsted inspectors are good is ridiculous. Anyway, it just gets very boring....

Going back to the discussion about multiplication and times tables.

 Learning tables is a good idea - both my kids are been taught their tables.

 However, it is something that is reliant on having a good capacity to remember those number facts and while learning by rote works for some, it will not work for others as this information will not always transfer  from the short term memory to the long term memory successfully. Some people have particular difficulty with applying this to numbers in particular. There are some psychometric memory tests which can pinpoint particular difficulties. It sometimes runs alongside dyslexia but can be totally independent to it:

http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Wide_Range_Assessment_of_Memory_and_Learning,_Second_Edition )

http://portal.wpspublish.com/portal/page?_pageid=53%2C69943&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL

I once purchased one of these to use with a student who was struggling with tables on the advice of the dyscalculia expert at an outpost of a dyslexia action centre:

http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Wrap-Ups-Hindi-Multiplication-Wrap/dp/B0007P95JA

The visual pattern is supposed to help and they can self check.

I always found being a reception teacher helped my understanding of  older students with maths problems , especially dycalculia. That whole things of needing concrete , real experience and underatnding in order to understand a process comes in very useful when understanding why someone just can't grasp a certain abstract concept .

I also find my experience of dealing with students with memory problems helps as a lot of maths depends on remembering sequences and formulas etc and if you have a poor memory and continually confuse the order of a sequence or forget a formula all the time, it becomes a nightmare to do simple things, No wonder so many people hate maths.

I used to really like teaching maths to my key stage one classes and a big focus was on maths games. I used to do loads of mental maths as well, especially at the end of a session. I think if the teacher is enjoying it, you pass that on to your class.