A short instructional video (presenter Clare) demonstrating how to use a hundred-square to discover and investigate patterns in times tables. The speaker guides learners to identify which times table is shown (examples: 3× and 8×), observe patterns in ones and tens, notice diagonal patterns (including connections to 6× and 9×), and use rules like “add 10, take away 2” to predict subsequent numbers.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Clare and we're now going to look at ways in which we can use a hundred square to explore patterns in times tables. We've already looked at the video where we've explored the 2 times, 5 times and 10 times tables. So let's move on and see what we can see next. Right, well, the first question I would ask children is, what times table do you think this is? Because it's really important for them to look at it and see for themselves. OK, it's starting with the 3, 3, 6, 9. Must be the 3 times table. I would then let children just play and investigate for themselves. See what patterns you can find, see what numbers there are. Are you noticing anything? Then they will start to look at it more closely and hopefully, I would hope they would notice things like, look at the ones. It goes 3, 2, 1, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. There's a definite pattern there. Look at the tens, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3. You know, they can see that there's definitely, you know, things there that they can notice and remember for next time. Obviously there are other things that this produces a beautiful diagonal pattern right across my hundred square. And another thing you can do is look at it and say, have a close look at this middle diagonal. What do you notice about that particular one? And maybe some of them will actually see that that is actually in the nine times table. And then they might even start to think, can you see any connections with a six times table in this hundred square? There are so many things you can do with this. And all the time that they're working with this and playing with it and they're learning more and more about the patterns and rules that there are in times tables. Let's have a look at another one. Okay, same question to start with, which times table do you think this one is? And okay, I hope they spot this one quite quickly. It's the eight times table. Okay. Straight away you can see it's still a similar pattern. We've got diagonals again, but they're much more spread out. Then we can start to explore and look more closely at the tens and ones. Let's have a look here. These tens are going up, 1, 2, 3, 4. Then you've got 5, 6, 7 towards the bottom. So they're going in a regular pattern. I can then also look at my ones and they're going back in twos, 8, 6, 4, 2. Now if you get really clever using a hundred square, you can spot that to work out the next one in the pattern, you have to add on 10 and take away two. Add on 10, take away two. You can have a lot of fun with it. Once you get to the end of your hundred square, you can say, can you work out what the next 10 numbers would be in this 8 times table? And you know, by the way that children do this, then they can check for themselves that they really have got the right numbers. I hope you have a lot of fun investigating times tables this way.
