The Year 4 Multiplication Tables Check lands in June. By then, every child in the country is expected to answer up to 25 times-tables questions, each inside about six seconds. That's not "knowing their tables" in the "I can count up to find the answer" sense — that's instant recall. Children who arrive at the MTC without that recall don't run out of knowledge, they run out of time.
You don't need a tutor. You don't need a clever app. You need a five-minute daily routine that builds recall, and you need to start it well before May. Here's one that works.
The five-minute routine
Pick a five-minute window that happens every day — the same time, ideally the same spot. After tea. Before bath. In the car waiting for school. The slot matters less than the consistency.
- Open Times Tables Practice and start a short session.
- Aim for 20 questions in five minutes. If your child is getting most of them right but struggling with specific ones, slow down — a wrong answer that takes thirty seconds is exactly what we're trying to remove.
- Don't correct on the spot. Note the two or three combinations they keep missing, and bring those back tomorrow.
- That's it. No rewards chart. No timer. No "one more for good luck." Five minutes, end of session.
Which tables, in which order
The research on retrieval practice is clear: the tables a child is worst at should be practised most — not last, as a "challenge." This is the opposite of how most parents organise it. We tend to ease them in with the easy tables, then move on. The weak tables never get the repetition they need.
A reasonable order to learn the tables:
- 2, 5, 10 — Year 2 foundations; most children are firm here by Year 3.
- 3, 4, 8 — Year 3 focus, introduced alongside the Year 2 tables.
- 6, 7, 9 — the awkward middle, Years 3 to 4.
- 11, 12 — Year 4, once 2 through 10 are fast.
If your child is in Year 3 and shaky on 7s, the answer is not "drill the 7s till they cry." It is: practise the 7s daily for two minutes, alongside the rest, until the 7s become the same kind of automatic as the 5s.
What to do when they get an answer wrong
The instinct is to quiz them on the missed fact over and over. This is the worst thing you can do. A wrong answer that just got corrected has no better chance of being recalled tomorrow than it did today. The thing that makes a fact stick is not frequency — it's spacing.
Move on. Note the missed fact. Tomorrow, the routine covers it again. The day after, again. By next week it's sticky.
Free practice, no signup needed
If you'd rather just have the practice, the Times Tables Practice page runs adaptive sessions across all 12 tables — free, no signup required. The same engine targets the combinations your child is slowest on, so two children using it get two different question sets.
If you want a free account that tracks which tables are fast, which are improving, and which still need work, sign up. The five-minute-a-day habit is what makes the difference — but having visibility on it helps.