While drinking mid-morning tea with a few of the teachers on Friday, one of them asked me to show a few students how to do long division. I asked her how to say “times” and “divided by” in Kiswahili, and then I got to work.
It quickly became clear to me that the five kids who were looking on did not know their multiplication tables, making it very hard to do long division. I decided to go back to the basics with them, and drew up a 10 x 10 grid and started randomly filling in the times tables with them. What’s 7x7? 8x3? 6x4? The two students standing next to me were struggling to answer the questions, while one of the students in the back was shouting out the answers without any problem.
I soon learned that he was reading the multiplication chart that every student has on the back of his or her exercise books. From their perspective, why should they memorize their multiplication tables when they always have such easy access to the answers?
I decided to ditch the long division and get back to learning the times tables through rote memorization. I started with the 9s, using a hand trick that a good friend of mine taught me, and then went on to tackle the 7s times tables through rote memorization. We didn’t get too far before school was over, but I hope to follow up with them on Monday.
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