The Order Schools Teach Times Tables In Is Almost Backwards

Picture the times tables as a job to be done: a 12 by 12 grid, 144 little facts, and a Year 4 child standing at the bottom of it. The usual plan is to climb in order. The 1s, then the 2s, then the 3s, all the way up to the 12s.

It is tidy, and it is the slow way round. Half the facts are duplicates anyway: 7 × 8 is the same sum as 8 × 7. Most of the rest run on a pattern a child can spot in seconds. What is genuinely left to grind down is tiny.

Step one: take the free wins (2, 10, 5 and 11)

Four tables barely need "learning" at all, because they run on patterns a child can see:

• The 2s: just doubling. Most children already have these.
• The 10s: put a zero on the end. 7 × 10 = 70.
• The 5s: every answer ends in 5 or 0, and it is half the matching 10.
• The 11s: up to 9, double the digit. 11 × 6 = 66.

Teach these first and your child feels fast before any of the hard work has started. Mine had the 2s, 5s and 10s down before they noticed they were learning anything. That early "I can do this" did more to carry them into the harder tables than drilling the 3s ever did.

Step two: the easy-ish middle (3, 4, 6, then 9)

With the patterns banked, the leftovers shrink quickly. The 4s are just doubling twice. The 3s are small and respond well to quick daily questioning. The 9s have their famous finger trick, handy as a bridge, though the goal is still to make the fact automatic rather than lean on the trick.

Work these the proven way: a few minutes most days, asked in random order, never chanted from the top.

Step three: the genuinely hard handful

Strip away everything above and look at what is left. It is tiny, and it is the same short list that trips up almost every child. That is no coincidence, and it is no reason to panic. It simply tells you where to spend your final fortnight. I have listed the six facts worth worrying about separately, because once you have seen how few there are, the grid stops looking like a mountain.

The job only feels heavy if you treat every fact as equally hard. Take the patterns first and save the hard handful for the end, and it shrinks in front of you.

Why the order beats the hours

Sequencing well does something that extra practice time cannot. It spends your child's limited patience on the facts that actually need it, and it banks an early sense of "I can do this" that makes the hard facts feel survivable.

The free interactive times tables grid is built for exactly this: pick one table, see its pattern, and watch the grid fill in as the facts land. And the case for "little and often" over the weekend marathon is worth reading on its own.