Multiplication Mania!

Year 5 and Year 6 have just finished a short unit in maths about multiplication.

The Year 5's have been learning about factors and multiples and the Year 6's have also looked at prime and composite numbers.

We have discovered that many students do not have automatic recall of multiplication facts.  This means that problem solving in maths becomes extra challenging for them as they have to rely on slow strategies to solve multiplication facts before they can even make a start on solving the actual problem.

Developing automaticity (fast and automatic recall of facts) is an important step to becoming a capable mathematician and this is where we want your help!

All maths groups are currently practicing multiplication facts as a warm up for our maths lessons, but some extra practice at home would also give your child a boost in this area.

Some fun and simple ways to practice include:

  Putting one of these..

 

somewhere prominent that your child regularly spends time.  My mum was smart and had one in the kitchen, AND one on the back of the toilet door.

You can also spend some quality family time playing card or dice games to reinforce the multiplication facts. Try this one for starters:

  

Spiral Multiplication

1. Use a deck of cards to make a spiral game board starting from the centre.

2. Place your game pieces at the start.

3. Player one rolls the dice and multiplies the number on the dice by the number on the playing card their piece is on. If they answer correctly, then they move the number of spaces that were on the dice.  If they are incorrect, they do not move.

4. Take turns and repeat until someone reaches the end of the spiral and wins.

There are also plenty of online games that your child can play to practise as well.  One we use regularly at school is Hit the Button.  Check it out at Hit The Button.  Oh, and did you know.... there is also an app for that!

Finally, there are many fun you tube videos with raps and songs to help those multiplication facts stick (perhaps annoyingly in your head too!).  Check out Mr De Maios playlist as a starting point, but make sure you go looking for some other fun ones with your child ... and why not ask them about what they have been learning in our cyber safety lessons while you're both at the keyboard?

Have fun getting those maths facts down pat!