A child told they have a hundred times-table facts to learn has been told something untrue and discouraging. The real number is about fifteen.
Where the hundred goes
The grid is ten by ten, so a hundred squares. Then:
- The 1 table is not a fact, it is a definition. That is nineteen squares gone.
- The 10 table is a place shift, learned in an afternoon. Another seventeen.
- The 2 and 5 tables are doubling and halving the tens, and most children have them before anybody calls them tables. Another twenty-eight.
- Everything left is in the grid twice: 7 × 8 and 8 × 7 are the same fact. That halves what remains.
What is actually left is about fifteen facts, and four of them do most of the damage: 6 × 7, 6 × 8, 7 × 8 and 7 × 9.
The order that works
2, 10, 5, then 4 (double the 2s), then 3, then 8 (double the 4s), then 6 (double the 3s), then 9 with its digit trick, and 7 last because it has no trick at all.
Teaching them in numerical order — 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 — puts the hardest table in the middle of the run, at the point where a child is most tired of the whole business.
Chanting is not knowing
A child who chants three, six, nine, twelve reaches 3 × 7 in about four seconds. That is a useful skill and it is not the table. The test that matters is the missing number: 3 × ? = 21 cannot be chanted through quickly, and a child who really knows the table answers it as fast as anything else.
The same applies to division. A child fluent forwards is often slow backwards, and 81 ÷ 9 is the question that finds out.
Stand on a fact, do not start again
When an answer will not come, the wrong move is to restart the chant from the beginning. The right one is to step from a fact already known. Seven eights is seventy take away two sevens: 70, 63, 56. Nine of anything is ten of it with one taken off.
A child with a route is never stuck, and never stuck means never guessing — which is what turns a hard table into a fear of maths.
Five minutes, not thirty
Recall is built by frequent short practice, not by long sessions. Five minutes on one table, most days, beats half an hour on Sunday, and the difference is not small.
Where to practise
Each table has a page of its own here with the whole table printed and the trick that works for it: the 7, the 8, the 9, and the rest. Each one has a game that deals all ten facts like cards rather than picking at random, so a child meets every one of them before any repeats. The worksheets print the same questions for the car or the kitchen table.