My spring break was last week, and during that time off of school I had the opportunity to be involved in a small elementary classroom at the Christian school that I graduated from. The school is only in its 4th year and it is very small. The classroom I was in had 8 students who were either in 4th, 5th, or 6th grade. Talk about a handful! It seemed that the teacher rarely got to "teach" because she was always making sure the the students were on task and that each grade had something to do while she tried to teach another grade. It was constant back and forth to each grade. I am not really sure if I could handle that!
One day while she was teaching math, the teacher gave the students a hint to remembering their 9 times tables that I had never seen before. Did you know that for every 9 times table the answer adds up to 9? It is true!
1X9=9
2X9=18 (1+8=9)
3X9=27 (2+7=9)
4X9=36 (3+6=9)
And so on.
I just thought that was a really neat little trick for students who have a hard time recalling those facts.
I was also given another trick for the 9's a while back. This one requires your hands so it would probably be a great trick for bodily/kinesthetic learners!
Here is how it works...
Hold your hands out in front of you with all your fingers spread. For 9X1 put down the first finger (going from left to right,,,just like reading). How many fingers are you hold up now? 9! Now for any number more than one it can get a little tricky but you just have to pay attention. 9X2 you would put only the second finger down. Everything on the left of the finger is the tens place and everything on the right of the finger is the ones place. So you would have 1 on the left and 8 on the right which would be 18. It works for all the ( times talbes! Pretty cool huh?
Do you know any ways to help remember your 9 times tables?
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1 comment:
Rachel~
I have enjoyed reading your posts on your blog. I really appreciate how you have taken the idea and you are making your blog your own. It is a great way to express your thoughts of education, share things that you find that are useful, and ask questions that need to be thought about so that you can develop into the best teacher that you can be. I just wanted to comment on the trick with the 9 times table. Isn't that great? I remember when a professor shared that with us in one of my teacher ed. classes. We were all amazed, and everyone asked the same question...why didn't anyone ever teach us this trick back in the 3rd or 4th grade? It is a good "trick" and it is a great way to reinforce the idea of looking for patterns in mathematics...a key to becoming a good problem-solver.
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