Pure memorisation is fragile and doesn't transfer. Building recall around relationships between facts makes it faster and sturdier.
25 August 2026 · 5 min read
Times tables are usually taught, and usually learned, as a list to be memorised — twelve rows, recited or drilled until they stick. That approach works, up to a point. But facts learned purely as memorised items tend to be fragile: forgotten quickly without repetition, and hard to recover under pressure when a child can't quite remember and has no way to work it out. There's a sturdier way to build the same recall.
Every times table fact is connected to several others. 6 × 7 is double 3 × 7. It's also one group of 7 more than 6 × 6. It's also 7 groups of 6, which is the same total as 6 groups of 7. A child who sees these connections has several routes back to the same answer if direct recall fails — a child who's memorised 6 × 7 = 42 as an isolated fact has exactly one route, and no backup when it doesn't fire.
This is genuinely the most useful single strategy: if a fact isn't yet automatic, work it out from a nearby fact that is. Doubling is the most reliable bridge — the 4 times table is the 2 times table doubled, and the 8 times table is the 4 times table doubled again. "Near neighbour" facts work too: if 6 × 6 = 36 is solid, then 6 × 7 is just one more group of 6, so 36 + 6 = 42. This isn't a workaround to avoid learning the fact properly — it's exactly how fluent recall eventually gets built, by repeatedly reaching the same answer through a reliable route until the route itself becomes unnecessary.
An array — objects or dots arranged in equal rows and columns — makes a times table fact visible rather than purely verbal. Seeing 6 rows of 7 dots, and recognising that the same array read the other way is 7 rows of 6, builds an image behind the fact rather than a sound pattern. Children who've only ever chanted a table in sequence often struggle the moment a fact is asked out of order, precisely because there's no image or relationship behind it — just a memorised position in a list.
A fact that's only ever been tested in isolation ("what's 7 times 8?") doesn't automatically transfer to a context where the multiplication is hidden inside a bigger problem — working out the total area of a rug, or how many chairs fit in rows. Practising times tables through occasional real, applied problems, not just flashcard-style recall, builds the kind of flexible knowledge that actually gets used later.
Reciting a table in sequence hides exactly the facts that are still shaky, because each answer cues the next. Testing at random — and paying attention to which specific facts take a beat longer to answer — is a far more honest way to find out what still needs work, and it's usually a small handful of facts, not the whole table.
Grasp Maths tests every times table fact out of sequence and tracks response time as well as accuracy, so it can tell a fact that's genuinely secure from one that's still being reasoned out — and focus practice on exactly the facts that need it, using the relationships between facts, not isolated repetition.
Try a free Grasp Maths practice session and see how the engine targets exactly the facts that are still slow.