Times Tables: The Most Effective Ways to Help Your Child Master Them

The Multiplication Tables Check (MTC) in Year 4 has focused minds on times tables in a way that hasn't been seen since the days of rote chanting. Children are now expected to recall any multiplication fact up to 12×12 in under 6 seconds. That's a high bar — and it requires a specific kind of practice.

The bad news: passive exposure doesn't work. Listening to a times tables song in the car is better than nothing, but it won't produce the rapid, automatic recall the MTC requires. That needs active retrieval practice — being asked a question and having to produce the answer.

The good news: it doesn't take long. Research by the Education Endowment Foundation suggests that 10 minutes of daily retrieval practice over 6 weeks is enough for most children to achieve fluency across all tables. The key word is daily — see our article on spaced repetition for why consistency matters so much.

Start with the easy ones. 2s, 5s, and 10s first — children often already know these. Then 3s and 4s. Leave 6s, 7s, 8s, and 9s until last; these are the hardest and benefit most from the confidence built by mastering the easier tables first.

Use the commutative property. If your child knows 3×7=21, they also know 7×3=21. That halves the number of facts to learn. Make sure they understand this — it's a genuine shortcut, not a trick.

Sodafom's Times Tables Race and Mental Maths Sprint games are built specifically for MTC preparation. They present facts in random order (just like the real test), time the responses, and adapt difficulty based on which facts the child finds hardest. Ten minutes before school, three times a week, and most children are MTC-ready within a term.