Teach Your Children Tables and Speed Maths for Kids

Teach Your Children Tables and Speed Maths for Kids

As the new school year is upon us, are your kids ready to tackle the new challenges the classroom brings as they progress into a higher grade? Inspirational teacher, and best-selling author, Bill Handley is here to give your kids a head-start and the confidence they need to excel in the classroom.

Bill Handley has developed and refined methods of teaching maths that have achieved amazing results, as seen on television's A Current Affair. His best-selling book Speed Mathematics showed everyone that people who excel at maths use better strategies - they're not necessarily more intelligent. Used together, Teach Your Children Tables and Speed Mathematics will improve your children's understanding of maths and introduce them to strategies that will have them performing like geniuses.

Schools the world over use Handley's innovative 'speed maths' approach in the classroom and, with these two classic books at their disposal, your kids will:
Be able to perform lightning-quick calculations in their heads
Master the 'times tables' in less than half an hour
Learn the basic principles of maths

With notes for parents and teachers included throughout, as well as suggestions for effective lessons and modified explanations of addition and multiplication for very young children, this special edition will fast make maths your kids' favourite subject and enable them to enjoy studying.

Bill Handley is recognised as an authority of mathematics and study methods in Australia and overseas. His methods of teaching maths, learning and thinking strategies have achieved astonishing results in schools worldwide.

Teach Your Children Tables and Speed Maths for Kids
Wrightbooks
Author: Bill Handley
ISBN: 9780730375449
Price: $29.95

Interview with Bill Handley

Question: Are the books Teach Your Children Tables and Speed Maths for Kids to be used at home or in the classroom?

Bill Handley: They can be used either way but they are especially written to be read and used at home and then applied in the classroom. Many families just read the books for fun. They can't believe they are learning basic maths while they are easily performing large calculations in their heads. Many teachers and homeschooling parents have told me they use the books as an aid to teaching their students. The methods keep them highly motivated.


Question: How do your books provide kids with an understanding of maths?

Bill Handley: Kids learn their basic number facts in a fraction of the time it takes using traditional methods. My books tell them what to think inside their heads as they make the calculations. In Teach Your Children Tables I use puzzles to illustrate mathematical concepts and in Speed Maths For Kids they play with the methods and experiment. The books not only teach readers what to do but how to do it. They learn the thinking processes involved in the calculations.


Question: What is the 'speed maths' approach?

Bill Handley: Speed Maths begins with multiplication. Instead of beginning with basic tables, the reader begins with what multiplication is--that seven eights really means seven eights added together. It is a shortcut method of addition. The student calculates numbers like 95 times 97 right from the start and has the satisfaction of knowing he or she is performing something special.

A professor of mathematics wrote to me from London to say he bought my book for his nine-year-old daughter and they both enjoyed it. It was easy so his daughter was able to succeed immediately and it was different enough to hold his interest. He was intrigued by the new way of calculating as well as impressed that he was able to make calculations in his head for which he would have automatically used a calculator.

While the student practises basic multiplication, he or she is learning basic number facts in record time. The learning process is much faster and much more pleasant than traditional methods.

Basically, I try to make mathematics easy and fun. I encourage kids to play with the subject rather than work with it.


Question: How does the 'speed maths' approach help kids and adults master the 'times tables' in less than half an hour?

Bill Handley: In ten minutes students learn how to calculate their tables up to the twenty times table. Students learn how to make an easy lightning calculation in their heads for 7 times 8 or 13 times 14. They appear to know the answers. After making the calculation a dozen or so times they simply call out the answer from memory. I have had students tell me, "I am sorry, Mr Handley. I am not using your methods any more."
"Why is that?" I ask.
"Because I remember the answers."

What they are saying is that they have memorised their tables, usually to around the twenty-times table.

With five minutes practice most kids will calculate 14 times 14 or 96 times 96 faster than their friends can put the numbers into a calculator. Some kids might take ten, or even 15 minutes to become so fast. I ask them, is that a bad thing that it took you 15 minutes to get so fast? No, because after 15 minutes you are just as fast as the kids who learnt to do it in five minutes.

It is interesting that while students begin to call the answers from memory, they will still make the mental calculation while they are saying the answer to check they have remembered it correctly.

As the kids learn to use the methods for division, squaring and finding square roots they get insight on how numbers and multiplication tables work, and how they can break numbers down, juggle numbers and use them in ways they had never been taught or considered. I encourage them to play and experiment with the methods.

Kids put in the effort because they see results for their efforts--and exciting results at that.


Question: Why is it important that kids have the confidence in regards to school work?

Bill Handley: Many people say they hate mathematics. They don't. What they hate is failure. After they learn the methods in my book, many students tell me mathematics has become their favourite subject.

I teach kids how they can check all their calculations so they never appear to make a mistake. They can check their work themselves before they hand in a test. This does wonders for their confidence and their self-esteem.

Also, people equate mathematical ability with intelligence. If you can say 135 times 135 is 18,225 without hesitation off the top of your head then you have a better than average brain. Kids I have taught have been treated as prodigies all the way through school and this has resulted in high performance in almost all their subjects. They are treated differently and they feel they have a reputation to live up to.

Everyone tells them they can do it so they believe it themselves. They are doing things their teachers can't do. I teach kids to be diplomatic using their new skills.

Visit my website at www.speedmathematics.com


Interview by Brooke Hunter

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