Hi all,

I work one to one with a child who is on the autistic spectrum, he struggles with his times tables. He is in year 5.

When i tested him on the easier times tables, 2, 3, 5 and 10 he was fine and he was able to answer well when is asked 1x2, 2x2, 3x2 etc etc. But when i asked him randomly 6x3 or 3x5, he would struggle to come up with the answer and sometimes say the answer one number away from the correct answer.

I was wondering if anyone knew of any good strategies on working on improving his ability to recall random times tables. His annual review is being done currently and we are working on his IEP and i wanted to include a good strategy to work on this problem

Any ideas you have would be greatly appreciated

It maybe that he needs to recite them in order. We teach the children to double the number and a child I work with (ASD) can do this.Have you tried musical times tables. I have written about it on another thread where the group of SEN pupils became quite competittive as it had a little test at the end.

one big problem for children with ASD is transference of knowledge, in simple terms this means they may learn that 2 elephants plus 2 elephants equals 4 elephants, but may not be ablt to transfer that into knowing that 2 apples plus 2 apples equals 4 apples

therefore if hes learnt to recite them in sequence doesnt mean that he will be able to recall them randomly

if this is a problem for him it may mean he neads to learn them randomly to be able to recall them, a long process but may be its the only way for him to learn them

I'll give it some thought to see if I can think of any more stratergies that may help

Not sure if it would help in this particular case, but I have heard of good results using this game:

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times tables to music tapes?

Not specifically for autistc kids we use it in our year 6 class (who are actually quite behind with tables)
A new teacher to the school has introduced something used in her previous school called 'One Minute Maths'
Children have a sheet with table in random order
eg 3x4=12
6x4=24
1x4=4
4x3=12
and so on. They are timed for one minute (we uses egg timers) When they first start a new table they may only get a short way down before time is up. They write the date where they stp and aim to beat it next time.As they practice (we encourage this at home as well as class) they get further down until they can eventually complete sheet in a minute. There is a certain order to learn the tables, not in order. After all tables are learnt they have sheets for multiplication facts and other mixed tables.
It realy seems to be working. Might be something you could try???

we used to use that as a starter in the lower ability groups for all years

Thanks all for all the helpful advise, i will try all the suggestions!