How Important?

We all would agree that knowing the times tables is important. It goes beyond just the early years. Fluency in the multiplication and division facts provides an essential foundation for all grades. Among many other things, it supports multiplication and division problem solving, fraction, ratio, and proportion problem solving, factoring whole numbers, polynomials, and simplifying expressions and solving equations in one, two, and more variables. Knowing the multiplication and division facts fluently puts less demand on working memory.

More than just facts

The importance of learning the times tables is more than just knowing ‘this times this equals that.’ The most valuable development in learning the times tables is also learning to apply them to:

• Solve for missing factors
• Find greatest common factors and divisors of two products
• Generate least common multiples/denominators of two products
• Find quotients and solve for missing divisors and dividends
• Connect all relationships of the multiplication and division fact families

With the Making Math Real 9 Lines based strategies I use, we will not only just learn the times tables, but will practice all these things as well!

Symbol Imaging

How do we do this? We use symbol imaging, which is one of the main sensory-cognitive developments necessary for being automatic with the math facts. Symbol imaging is the visuo-perceptual ability to perceive, hold, store, and retrieve sequences of numbers and/or mathematical symbols. To quote David Berg, “Students with under-developed sensory-cognitive abilities often have limited access to memory and are characteristically challenged by learning, retaining, and applying the math facts, recalling formulas and definitions, remembering the sequences and structure of multi-step problem solving, integrating concepts with their respective procedures, and managing all the details in their procedural work.”