At Birkwood Primary School, we prioritise our children mastering number facts and times tables relevant to their year level. We feel this is crucial as having quick recall of these key number facts helps reduce cognitive overload, freeing up working memory. Our ‘working memory’ is limited and is easily overloaded.
Therefore, if number facts are securely learnt and stored in our ‘long-term memory’, we can draw upon them when we need them, and not use up our limited working memory by having to calculate facts. A freed up working memory allows us to focus on the real maths, problem solving with reasoning!
With this in mind, we have taken part in a 2 year CPD project with Professor Jenny Field to create a 7-step approach to the teaching of times tables and number facts. To complement this, we have identified and broken down the key requirement for acquisition of number facts, year by year, in our ‘Fact Fluency- Ready to Progress’ Document.
To strengthen this approach, we have implemented half-termly ‘soft testing’ across school through sound checks based on the facts/ times table focus for that block. In years 3 and 4, these checks are undertaken on a weekly basis, and cover all times tables (to 12x). This allows us to identify progression, and areas for improvement. This then allows teachers to identify individuals and groups for intervention.
Both documents can be accessed below: