> "It's those numbers near the middle that kids find the hardest - the sixes, sevens, eights and nines," says Flurrish's director One problem with getting kids

> "It's those numbers near the middle that kids find the hardest - the sixes, sevens, eights and nines," says Flurrish's director One problem with getting kids to memorize times table the English way is that those numbers are near in the middle, not at the top. The 11 and 12 times tables can be worked out by the same process as for multiplying by 13, so why memorize for 12 but not for 13 ? Children should finish memorizing at the easy 10 times, so they have a sense of having nailed the numbers, instead of a sense of dangling at the difficult 12 times tables and it can only get harder. Also, when reciting tables, why should children recite both 7 x 8 and 8 x 7 when they could be practising the commutative rule. They should only memorize multiplying when, say, the second number is higher than the first, so memorize 7 x 8 but not 8 x 7. Children would then feel like there's less needing to be tackled, the only really hard ones being 4 x 8, 6 x 7, 6 x 8, 7 x 8, and some squares. I suggested the second number being higher than the first for memorizing multiplication instead of vice versa because children also need to memorize addition tables up to 9 + 8, and because they'd do that before times tables, it's better to for the second number to be lower than the first for that. Another benefit is kids wouldn't even need to say "plus" or "times" when reciting, just the two single-digit numbers because whether it's addition or multiplication is implied by which number is greater, e.g. "3, 2 is 5", "7, 4 is 11", "2, 7 is 14", "7, 8 is 56", "6, 6 is 36".