One of the hardest things for children to achieve in year 3 is to learn the 3 times table off by heart. In year 2 they are expected to get to grips with the 2x, 5x and 10x tables, each of which has a pattern that is easily seen. The 3x table is not so easy and it does need to be learned by rote. A common error that children make is to think that just knowing the pattern of answers is enough, in other words just being able to count up in threes: 3,  6,  9,  12 etc. Whilst this is helpful, it does not satisfy the ultimate aim of knowing, for example,  within a split second, that 6 x 3 is 18. Why is it so useful to know these facts off by heart? The answer lies in the maths children are expected to do in later years, such as written long multiplication, written division, finding multiples and factors and so on. A child that does not know his/her tables will really struggle with written multiplication and division, partly because it will take far too long to answer each question. If a child knows that 3 x 6 = 18 then they can instantly work out that 19 divided by 3 is 6 with one remainder. Without this knowledge of tables they will be counting up using fingers, making jottings and generally getting in rather a state, losing confidence and learning to hate maths! So, learn the 3 times table by rote, by saying it out loud; ‘One times three is three’ ‘Two times three is six’ ‘Three times three is nine’ and so on. Once this has been achieved it can be shortened in the child’s mind to: ‘One three is three’ ‘Two threes are six’ And then even shorter to ‘One three, three’ ‘Two threes, six’ ‘Three threes, nine’ where just the question and answer are given, with no other unnecessary words. In this way the whole table can be said in less than five seconds and all the tables said in less than one minute is quite possible. As the table is being learned children need plenty of practice at putting it to use. We have provided over 20 pages of worksheets to help with this, as well as our very popular tables practice squares. They can all be found in the year 3 multiplication category.