I scream, you scream…
Em has always had a hard time learning her multiplication tables. She continues to count on her fingers, which isn’t a great technique when you’re calculating, say, eight times eight in the middle of a math test. She can do it, mind you, but it’s slow and laborious and painful to watch. She gets frustrated when I try to teach them to her, and hiring a special math tutor at crazy dollars per hour didn’t do a whole lot to help, in my personal opinion.
Enter ice cream.
This year, the fifth graders are having an ice cream sundae party. Which multiplication facts you know determines what you get. Every fact group you have down pat earns another topping. For instance, knowing all your ones might get you the ice cream, all the twos might get hot fudge, and so on.
Let us never underestimate the power of bribery. As one of Em’s reading tutors said this summer, “I don’t work for free, do you?” Good point. It would seem that ice cream is exactly the reward Em needs. “I want to learn all my twelves!” she told me yesterday. Apparently when you learn the 12’s you get your choice of a special topping. Em likes salt and pepper on her ice cream, so maybe that’s what she’ll go for.
Last night we taught her that 12×6=72. This morning, she still remembered it when asked. This may seem like a small thing, but in the past the answers have always flowed out of her mind immediately. Remembering the answer to a multiplication problem overnight is huge for her. We started work on 12×7=84 on the way to school this morning.
“There is a piece of paper with all the multiplication facts on it and I’m going to fill them all in and turn it in for an ice cream sundae.” She says she’s already started, but wants to work on her 11s and 12s now. The party is in early October, so I think we have time to get this done.
We’re thrilled at this breakthrough. I’m sure that sundae will taste even sweeter for all the hard work she’s done.
When I was learning my tables, there was one that I just couldn’t get. It may have been 8×7. (Thank GOD I seem to have let it go, even if it only took 23 years…) My mom kept saying, “Oh, there’s your favorite!” and I would get very cross and say, “It most certainly is NOT!” But I sure didn’t forget it, no ma’am.
I wonder if old episodes of Square One are available? I remember the country song about the 9s, and it was awesome 🙂
my mom sent me upstairs with flashcards from 1-12 and told me not to come out of my room until I knew them all.
I thought my odds were pretty good to skip 2 of them and not get caught, and to this day I don’t know my 7 and 12 times tables off the top of my head. A classic example of hard work paying off over time and laziness paying off immediately.
Salt & Pepper on ice cream? I never heard of that. I must try that! 🙂 And tell Emily I think she’s awesome for learning the times table. I had trouble with it in school, myself. Took me a year to get past the 8’s. And I was in the 5th grade!
Hey, math was never my forte. I was the language arts and reading whiz in school…lol.
The times tables were my nemesis. I was horrible at memorizing them. If I had an ice cream incentive, that might have helped! I hope it works for Em!
8×7 was one I specifically DID remember – because of the 5678 pattern (8×7 = 56).
Multiplication tables were otherwise not much fun, no. :/
The hubby still counts on his fingers – but it’s in a kind of abacus style (it’s called Chisenbop – his mom bought the system for him when he was growing up b/c of the problems he had with math; apparently it was sold in the same fashion as Hooked on Phonics. In looking at some info online, I can’t picture trying to do it rapidly, but he can do it pretty quickly – and he says that, at the time this was being sold, there was a girl who appeared on the Tonight Show who could do arithmetic using fairly large numbers with this method faster than what Johnny Carson could do on a calculator.
Not to say that Em shouldn’t learn her multiplication tables! Just had to mention this in connection with counting on fingers.
Because cripe, is division ever SO much easier IF you know your multiplication tables. I hated that they intro’d long division so early in the elementary math books we used where I had been teaching – it would be so much easier for the students if they let them MASTER multiplication a bit more before getting to long division.
…but that’s a rant for another day. 😀
Sounds like it is time for Multiplication Rock!!