"Mugging" to memorise

Nothing works better than memorising tables with traditional chants, a science conference said.

Teachers may use a range of methods to help children in learning mathematical tables but nothing works better than memorising tables with traditional chants, a science conference has heard.

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Dr. Sylvia Steel, a research associate at Royal Holloway University, said that traditional method of learning tables by rote helps children in doing sums faster and more accurately, while those using blocks or fingers to work out the problems are slower and less accurate.

Steel said that rote learning had given way over the past 30 years to methods using shapes, diagrams or grids, which aimed to emphasise understanding or arithmetic concepts.

"Learning multiplication tables was, for a while, almost extinct in state schools because it was considered boring and unlikely to lead to understanding. But many teachers taught children by rote behind closed doors," BBC quoted her as saying.

She said that methods, which involved counting or calculation, do not necessarily lead to automatic retrieval of number facts.

According to Barbara Ball of the Association of Teachers of Mathematics, although times tables went out of fashion for a while, they are being learnt in school, alongside a range of other methods.

"Ten years ago, there was less recalling of tables but I would say that we have gone back to the tables. There is no right way or wrong way of doing anything and teachers have a range of different strategies because what helps one child to learn a concept might not work for another," the report quoted her as saying.