Why Students Should Learn Their Timetables

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I can still remember how much time I spent learning my timetables back in school. We would practice them every day at school before starting the rest of our lessons. Our teacher would sometimes play games and do challenges so that we would practice them, but also be encouraged to learn them better.

I can still remember my parents helping me drill them regularly. While driving to school, my mum would ask random timetables questions and I’d then have to figure them out. We’d see how many I could do before we got to school. Looking back, I don’t think we ever recorded how many we did…

All of this is to say that there was a lot of importance put on them and being able to do them well.

At the time, I didn’t understand why we had to do these all the time. It was a little boring and once I could figure them out, I always wondered why that didn’t seem good enough. Now that I’m a tutor, I understand why.

Here’s 3 reasons why students need to be as proficient in their timetables as they possibly can.

Patterns are closely related to IQ and intelligence.

1. Timetables practices pattern recognition

Maths is all about patterns.

Being able to recognise and manipulate these patterns is a hugely important part of school and life outside of school. The better you are at this, the better your career will probably be.

By learning the timetables, we are able to demonstrate a basic ability to recognise and memorise patterns. When we move on to the more complex questions, we are then learning how to use these patterns and manipulate them. This is the basis of problem solving.

When a student masters their timetables early, they are better able to understand pattern recognition.

Abstract thought is the ability to think bigger and deeper.

2. Timetables improves abstract thinking

Maths is all about patterns.

Being able to recognise and manipulate these patterns is a hugely important part of school and life outside of school. The better you are at this, the better your career will probably be.

By learning the timetables, we are able to demonstrate a basic ability to recognise and memorise patterns. When we move on to the more complex questions, we are then learning how to use these patterns and manipulate them. This is the basis of problem solving.

When a student masters their timetables early, they are better able to understand pattern recognition.

If you think clearly, you’re in control.

3. Timetables help students think clearly

Being able to think clearly is a fundamental component of critical thinking.

The top skill in maths is not being able to do calculus, nor is it using the Pythagorean formula. The reason is these are extremely important for very specific fields and most students won’t go into those.

The top skill in maths is learning how to think through problems. One of the most important factors of being able to problem solve is to evaluate the information given and then clearly think through them with a defined process. This is how to get the best results every time.

Maths at school lays out the groundwork for how to do this. Unfortunately, if a student isn’t able to do their timetables, their ability to train using more complex problems is drastically reduced. In fact, if a student isn’t able to do their timetables, the chance they can thrive in year 8 is almost zero.

That’s how much their problem solving abilities have been reduced.

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