A short instructional YouTube video (presenter: Hannah) demonstrating activities to push pupils to greater depth in multiplication. It covers: converting repeated addition to multiplication (e.g., 6×4; 5×5), a word problem where a 130 cm plank leaves a 4 cm remainder when cut into equal parts (exploring dividing 126 by different divisors and using decimals like 25.2 cm for fifths), and a partition/ratio question where Group A has three times the children of Group B (60 total → 45 and 15). The video emphasises rewording problems, using physical/pictorial representations, and encouraging multiple solution methods and positive praise for novel approaches.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Hannah and in this video we're going to look at what multiplication in greater depth might look like for your pupils. We'll work through some different activities which will require your pupils to reason and apply their knowledge of multiplication. This first problem is a really good one for year three, however, could easily be adapted for older or younger pupils. It asked pupils to rewrite this addition as multiplication, so it's important that they can understand the link between repeated addition and multiplication. So in this first example, there's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 fours. So I can rewrite it as 6 multiplied by 4. This second example is a little bit trickier. You may wish to ask your pupils, how many fives can you spot? They must Notice that the n 8 and the 10 together add together to make 10. That's another two fives. So altogether I have five fives, so I can write that as 5 multiplied by 5. This next problem says Taya has a plank of wood which measures 130cm. She cuts it into equal parts and has a piece 4 cm left. What length could the equal pieces measure? You may wish to ask your pupils to reword this problem as that's a great way of assessing their understanding. It's important that pupils realise here that there is not just one possible answer. It does not stipulate how many pieces of wood is broken into. So they can start by just having a go. So you might decide that you're going to split it into two equal parts. So first of all, I'm going to do 132, take away four, which will give me 126. I can then split my 126 into two equal parts, Which tells me that each piece of wood is going to be 63cm long. Pupils can then keep working through it like this and divide it by three and four and so on. It's interesting to see if your pupils have a go at using decimals. For example, if they decided to do 126 divided by five, You would find that you had 25 and 1/5 or 25.2 centimeters. Thinking like this should be rewarded with positive praise, as it's fantastic that they've noticed that you can also use decimal places. You may wish to challenge your pupils to see if they can come up with all the different possibilities that could be found. They may find this a little bit tricky, so you may wish to question them as to why they have the answer. This final problem says that group A has three times as many children as group B. Altogether, there are 60 children. How many children are in each group? Your pupils may wish to represent this using physical objects, or they may wish to choose to represent this pictorially, like one of these two examples. This should then help them to notice that three in every four children are in group A, and one in every four children are in group B. So therefore three quarters of the children are in group A and one quarter are in group B. So therefore they can use this to calculate that 45 children are in Group A and 15 are in Group B. You may wish to challenge your pupils to see how many different ways they can calculate this problem. So there are some different activities that you can use to challenge your pupils to work at greater depth in multiplication.
