Stuck on Multiplication

One of the hardest things is teaching students who don’t know things that are “obvious” or things “they ought to know already.” This is especially true when teaching arithmetic to adult students. Watching them struggle with addition and multiplication tables can be very taxing.

I have a student who, even at the end of the quarter, has still not memorized multiplication tables, and struggles to do addition without counting everything on his fingers. This makes everything else, from decimals to fractions, difficult to do. I am working in the tutoring center this quarter, and have had a chance to work one on one with this student, but it is still challenging.

So, what to do?

First thing is to take a deep breath, as often as needed.

The department I am currently in requires students to get 100% on basic skills tests for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in order to pass the class, regardless of their overall grade otherwise. This may sound harsh, but having watched students struggle it seems to be the best way to stress the importance of this material.

As a tutor there are several techniques that can be used. They come down to “drill and kill.” This year I was introduced to is The Clock Method.

Start with a clock.

Then put the number that you want to multiply by in the center, and point at different numbers on the dial. Keep going back to the ones that students take more than a couple of seconds to get.

As students get better with basics, then you can start working with students to recognize patterns to aid when memorization fails, and to help increase speed of calculations. 

Things like:

·         What happens when you add nine to a number?

·         How can you tell when a number is divisible by 3?

·         What are tricks for remembering multiplying by 9?

While it can feel frustrating teaching students the basics when they are in college, I have found that it can be deeply satisfying. Often the only thing holding students back is their inability to do the basics. Granted it’s a big “only thing,” but once students get past it amazing things can happen. I have a student now who started in basic math and is now getting A’s in algebra, once she got past that one hurdle she has begun to shine mathematically.