How to Teach Kids to Remember Multiplication Facts
Even with the proliferation of smartphones and computers, having the multiplication tables memorized is an important life skill. Simple multiplication is a part of our everyday lives, like being able to quickly figure out the tip your waiter earned in a restaurant or how to double a recipe. Rote memorization is the best way to learn multiplication tables, but teach your students some tricks and games to help them remember.
Instructions
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Review addition with your students to make sure they understand the basic concept before moving in to multiplication tables. Then teach your students that the "x" in a multiplication problem means "groups of," so "3x3" would read "three groups of three." As long as your students understand addition, they should be able to grasp the concept of adding three groups together.
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Teach your students that the order in which the numbers are written in a multiplication problem does not matter. "2x3" is the same as "3x2." This will help when your students are learning a new multiplication table and can recognize some of the problems from the numbers they have already learned. If they already know their one- and two-times tables, then when they get to threes, they will already know "3x1" and "3x2."
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Give your students timed tests on each multiplication table. When your students can quickly and confidently answer the questions on a single multiplication table, like the threes, start to mix in questions from the other ones they have already learned so they begin to incorporate their knowledge.
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Teach your students simple tricks. Any number times one equals itself. Use words that have no numerical value to test their understanding of this. You could say "Bubblegum times one equals bubblegum" and it would still represent the one times table. Two times any number is the same as that number plus itself. If your students understand addition, the twos should not be a problem. Teach the threes by breaking it out into addition problems, too. By the age children are taught multiplication, they should already know how to count by fives, so the multiplication table for fives is usually one students grasp quickly.
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Expect to spend the most time on the sixes, sevens and eights. There is no easy way to remember these, so start by reminding your students that they already know most of the answers if they invert the equations.
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Explain the trick to multiplying by nine. Tell your students to hold out their hands in front of them. Bend down the finger the same number of places from their left pinky as the multiplier. For "9x4," bend down the fourth finger from the left, which is your pointer finger. The remaining fingers tell you the answer, with the bent finger indicating where to stop counting for the first digit and where to start the second digit. You will have three fingers to the left of your bent finger, meaning the first digit is three, and six digits to the right of your bent finger, meaning the second digit is six. Teach them to double-check their answers by adding the two digits together--they will always equal nine.
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Encourage your students to come up with rhymes to help them remember the answers to multiplication problems that give them the most trouble. One teacher's class wrote "Had two 8's, dropped them on the floor, picked them up and had 64." Whatever rhymes help your students remember will work; they don't all have to use the same one.
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References
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