Not to be rude, but this is pretty basic stuff. I only say that because if you're having that much trouble with it, you might want to talk your professor/teacher and try to get some extra help.
Tables in HTML are created primarily using three different elements, <table>, <tr>, and <td>. The <table> is the outer most one, and encapsulate all the others, and all the content of the table. This is also where the padding and spacing values are specified as attributes of the table element (e.g., <table padding="7" spacing="12">)
Each row is defined and enclosed by a <tr> element within the <table> element. Then, individual cells within that row are created with <td> elements, and the contents of the cell go inside the <td>.
For instance, this will create a simple 2 row, 3 column table, with lower case letters in the first row, upper case in the second:
<table>
<tr>
<td>a</td>
<td>b</td>
<td>c</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>X</td>
<td>Y</td>
<td>Z</td>
</tr>
</table>
Hope that helps.