Thinking Strategies: Its Effectiveness in the Teaching of Multiplication Facts to Low Achievers of Mathematics

Many students have found the learning of multiplication a difficult task. Without mastering multiplication facts, a student will always resort to fundamental strategies which may be undesirable in problem-solving. Many teachers and educators agree that learning basic facts in the four operations are the fundamental steps that precede learning harder facts. Referring to the aspect of computational errors, Knifong and Holton (1975) indicated that computational errors accounted for 49% of the total errors made by 35 students who sat for the Metropolitan. Achievement Test. Suydam (1975) and NCTM (1977) stressed the importance of basic facts even though calculators and lately computers have been introduced into the school curriculum. The purpose of this study was to investigate the methodology of teaching basic facts which would alleviate the problems of teaching these facts to low achievers of Mathematics. A review of studies on thinking strategies shows that very few were carried out in learning the thinking strategies, particularly in multiplication using low achievers as the target. The success of using thinking strategies to teach multiplication number facts to most students does not imply its success in teaching all students. One of the intentions of this study is to investigate what strategies are useful in helping the low achievers in learning mathematics.