A short instructional transcript by Rebecca presenting simple classroom strategies for teaching multiplication to primary pupils. She demonstrates using a hundred-square to visualise multiplication patterns and common multiples, a finger-based trick to teach the nine times table, and suggests practice techniques — stories, drawings, rhymes or chants — for hard-to-remember facts like 7×8.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Rebecca, and in this film I'm going to get you some simple and effective strategies for teaching times tables. Now, a hundred square is a really useful tool for teaching number patterns and in particular, patterns in multiplication. You could start by asking children to identify numbers in the 2 times table and then numbers in the 4 times table and the 8 times table. And from doing this they'll be able to see that they have multiples in common. We can also use it to teach common multiples. For example, if I highlight the numbers in the five times table, say 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and so on, and then I ask people highlight the ones in the four times table, I'll change colour. So 4, 8, 12, 16, 20. Pupils can easily see that 20 is in the four and the five times table. So it is a common multiple. And you can use a hundred square for teaching any times table in this way. Now, the children in my class absolutely love this next tip, and this is to how to teach the nine times table. So ask your pupils to have their palms out in front of them and I'll do it this way. And what we'll do is we'll start with 4 times 9. Put your fourth finger down like that and the fingers on the left of the number are the tens and the ones on the right are the ones. So you can see that we have 30 on the left and six on the other side. So four times nine is 36. Let's do it again with seven times nine. Put your seventh finger down and you can see we have six tens and three ones. So seven times nine is 63. Now, there's some multiplication facts that just don't stick and they're really difficult to remember. And, and this is the same for pupils and adults. For me, it's seven times eight. What you want to do is get children to have lots of time to practice it. Give them opportunities to do things like write stories around the multiplication fact, maybe draw a picture, or they could come up with rhaps and rhymes. And this rhyme here is one that a pupil in my class wrote. And it's who are those numbers at the door? 8, 8, 64. So there you go. There's three really simple strategies for teaching times tables.
