The superintendent said he’d never seen multiplication taught using the circle. That’s how I was taught in the mid 50s. Teacher would point to the x6 and then to a 7 and the class would shout “42”. We’d do the drill for ten or fifteen minutes every day. We were expected to know the answers as well as our own names—ie. you weren’t supposed to have to about it. Very few kids today really know their times tables.
How does it work?
I see a sequence of 2-4-6-8
Then a 3; the third number after that is a 6; the third after that is a 12.
I don’t see an obvious pattern otherwise.