Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Sunday, March 20, 2016
Monday, March 14, 2016
Tips for Multiplication Fluency from ASF@Broad St.
Hello Families and Students,
March is Multiplication Challenge month at ASF!!!! Challenge your child to fluently know their multiplication facts. If your child is in grade 1 or 2, begin helping them with skip counting. For example, 2,4,6,8,10,12….. To make it more challenging, begin at 6 instead of 2. This is your child’s foundation to learning their multiplication facts.
If your child is in grade 3-5, here are some strategies to help them learn their multiplication facts.
· Start with the fact families of 0, 1, 2, and 3. When memorizing, it's important to rehearse a small portion of facts before attempting to learn the entire chart.
· If your child is struggling with multiplying, put it in terms of adding. That is, 4x3 is 4+4+4.
2. Explain how the commutative property makes everything easier. Show your child that each answer repeats, so, technically, they only have to learn half of the chart (score!). 3x7 is the same as 7x3. When they've learned the fact families of 0, 1, 2, and 3, they already know 4 numbers each of 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10.
· After your child has mastered 0-3, move onto 4-7, and then 8-10. If you want to go above and beyond, work with 11 and 12, too.
Discuss patterns in the whole chart. It doesn't all have to be rote memorization with no clues or hints. The chart will easily point out things to look for.
· All the multiples of ten end in zero.
· All the multiples of 5 end in either 5 or 0 and are half as large as the multiples of ten. (10x5=50; 5x5=25, or half of 50)
· Any number x 0 is still 0. No matter what.
· Any number times 1 is that number.
Know the tricks. Luckily, math is full of shortcuts. Teach your child these tricks and they'll be impressed and, hopefully, quite thankful.
· To memorize the 9's tables, use your fingers. Spread them all in front of you, palms down. For 9x1, put your left pinky down. What do you have showing? 9. For 9x2, put your second finger down (the left ring finger). What do you have showing? 1 and 8. 18. Put your third finger down--2 and 7. 27. This works all the way up to 9x9 (8 and 1. 81).
· If your child can double a number, the x4's will be easy. Just double the number and double it again! Take 6x4. 6 doubled is 12. 12 doubled is 24. 6x4=24. Use this to make the answer become automatic. Again, this is about memorizing.
· To multiply anything by 11, just duplicate the number. 3x11=33. Two 3's. 4x11=44. Two 4's. The answer is in the question, just twice.
· Do speed drills. Now that your child is familiar with the entire chart, drill them. Drill them over breakfast, during commercials, and for a few minutes before bed. As you progress, get faster and faster and faster.
· At the beginning, start in order. As you get more and more convinced that they have it down, start mixing it up. They'll slow down initially but then should spark right back up to where they were.
· Make it fun. By this point, you both may be wondering what those squiggles in each number really are. Spice it up for the both of you with games and contests.
· Have your child make a set of flash cards. Write the problem, like 4 x 9, on the front and the answer, 36, on the back. The act of writing out the multiples will provide another repetition/reinforcement. Use a timer to see how many cards they can go through in a minute. Repeat two more times. Can they beat that score tomorrow?
· You could also do this with a blank chart. That's an easy way to monitor which ones they're struggling with.
· Grab a deck of cards. This game is similar to War, but with multiplication. You each get half the deck to place face down in front of you--don't look at the cards! Each player flips their first card simultaneously--the first person to say the answer based on the two numbers gets both cards (the object of the game is to win them all). If the two of you flip a 7 and a 5, the answer to shout out is 35. For Jacks, Queens, and Kings, you can use 11, 12, and 13, use them as 0's, or take them out entirely.
· Say a number, like 30. Can they list all of the possible combinations that multiply to it? 5 x 6? 3 x 10?
· Say a number, then ask for the next multiple. For example, start at 30 and ask for the next multiple of 6. Or start at 18 and ask for the next two multiples of 9. You could even start at 22 and ask for the next multiple of 4, even though 22 is not a multiple of 4. Be tricky once they have it.
· Try multiplication bingo. Your child fills in a six-by-six grid with whatever numbers they want. You read off a problem like "5 x 7." If they have 35 on their bingo card, then they mark it off. Continue until someone has a "bingo."
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)