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Times tables spinner for random practice

Six multiplication facts on the rim, three seconds a spin. Elimination mode is on, so a fact leaves the wheel once it has been asked and six spins give six different questions rather than the same one twice. Every fact still on the wheel has the same chance of being next.

This wheel is already set up for the job. Open it in the editor to change the list, the machine or the odds.

Every spin draws from your browser’s cryptographic random source. How a draw is made sets out the method and its limits.

Open this wheel in the editor

Why does random order beat reciting a table in sequence?

Because a child chanting six, twelve, eighteen, twenty-four is recalling a sequence, not a fact. Ask the same child for 6 × 7 on its own and you often watch them start the chant again from the beginning — that restart is the tell. The answer was never stored anywhere the question can reach it.

Mixed order forces the other kind of recall, and it comes with the awkward half of the evidence attached: mixing question types makes the practice session look worse and the test a day later much better. In one study of mixed maths practice, scores the next day were roughly double. Expect the drill to feel harder than the chant — that is what it is for.

Which facts should come up more often than the rest?

The six, seven, eight and nine tables, and inside them a short list that misbehaves everywhere: 6 × 8, 7 × 8, 6 × 7, 6 × 9, 4 × 8 and 7 × 9. In one large sample of nine- and ten-year-olds answering tens of thousands of questions, 6 × 8 was got wrong more often than any other fact on the grid — more often than it was got right.

Turn on weights and give those facts a two or a three. Their segments widen by exactly the same factor, so a child can see that the hard ones come round more often and nobody has to be told the wheel is loaded. Whatever is already secure stays at one; it is on the rim to keep the drill honest, not to fill time.

How do you run this for a whole class rather than one child?

Fullscreen and a name picker, in that order. Put the wheel on the board, spin the fact, then draw the name — because the class thinks about the question for the second it takes to find out who is answering. That second is the whole technique, and it is why cold-calling classes end up with more voluntary answers over time rather than fewer, once being asked stops depending on who put a hand up.

Keep the pace short. Three seconds a spin is set for exactly this: a wheel that takes eight seconds to stop is a wheel a class watches instead of a wheel a class works with. Twelve facts, twelve spins, elimination on, and the drill ends when the rim is empty rather than when the room loses interest.

What else is this wheel good for?

It is the number wheel with facts typed onto it instead of a range, so weights and elimination behave exactly as they do there. When the question is which pupil answers rather than which fact comes next, the name wheel holds the register.

Draw the pupil instead of the question and it is a classroom name picker. Make the segments unequal on purpose and the drill stops being arithmetic practice and becomes a probability lesson.

Questions from teachers and parents

Paste it. Switch the list to its text view and put one fact on each line — twelve lines for a table, thirty-six for the six, seven and eight tables together. The rim stays readable to about ninety entries; past that the labels stop being drawn and the list beside the wheel becomes the readable copy. A full 144-fact grid is a spreadsheet rather than a wheel, and splitting it into tables is the version that works in a lesson.

Weight them, and accept what the wheel does not know. It has no record of last week’s mistakes and no idea which child is sitting in front of it — you are the memory, and the weight is where you write it down. Give a missed fact a three, watch its segment become three times as wide as the others, and drop it back to one when it stops being missed. That last step is the one everybody forgets.

Yes. Fullscreen fills the screen with the wheel and the result and hides everything else, which is what the back row needs; press F to go in and Escape to come back. The high-contrast palette is on this wheel for the same reason — a chalkboard face with strong segment colours survives a projector bulb and a bright classroom better than a pastel one does.

In two places. Elimination takes each fact off the rim as it is drawn, so the wheel itself is the list of what is left to ask. The session log beside it keeps what has already been asked, in order, with the time, and it can be exported as a file if you want a record of the drill. The log lives on your device and clears when the tab closes.