Trigger Memory Systems

Okay. I'm a believer.

I had heard of Times Tales by Trigger Memory Systems and thought about buying this book off and on for the last 3 years. I wish I had just broken down and done it! Oh, the time it would have saved!

Both of my boys excel in math. Truly. They each skipped a grade early on and grasp mathematical concepts very quickly. When introduced to multiplication in the 3rd grade, each of them quickly understood the concept. But recalling the facts.....not so much. They both used the same technique to avoid actually memorizing: they added. If they ran across 4 x 7, they simply added 4+4+4+4+4+4+4. They got the problems right, but they took quite a while doing so. We drilled and quizzed and played games. Nothing doing. For each boy, I took a month off of their regular math book and focused only on the multiplication tables. They got it, but their speed was still lacking.

As you can see by the tests above, Times Tales changed all of this. Ethan, being in the 6th grade, had pretty well worked out most of his frustrations in this area. At first, he felt the book actually slowed him down. It did require a different way of looking at things. But after completing the 2nd half of the book, he felt much more confident and improved slightly. There wasn't a huge drop in his time, but his very demeanor while taking the test was different. Much less stress. Joel cut his time from a frantic 4 min. and 25 sec. to a relaxed 1 min. and 21 sec. I gave Ethan a retest and he also reached 1 min. and 21 sec. He is now content to tie with his 3rd grade little brother. Not bad for a week's work.

The concept is so simple that it doesn't even seem possible that it could work. But work, it did. The book consists of cute picture stories that you sit down and read. You don't examine or explain, you just read what it says. Ask the questions it tells you to ask, then flip to the next story. It is divided into two parts. Each part takes 45 minutes at the most. We read part one and then spent several days working with flashcards and playing a dice game that comes with the book. Before starting Part Two, I had them take a test to score their time. We sat down and read part two, following the same unquestioning technique (though I still wondered how it could possibly be working.) We spent a few days doing flashcards and games again and then we retested.

Wow.

Cute, simple stories like this one:

I can't tell how it works. But trust me, it works!

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