Ideas to Teach Multiplication Facts
While you may not regularly need to figure out the area of a triangle, multiplication facts are an aspect of math class that does turn up in daily life. From coupons to recipes to paying bills, multiplication facts are everywhere. Even if your child does believe you about multiplication fact usage, it doesn't mean that he'll be quicker to learn his facts. Most kids respond much better to fun than to practicality, so use these enjoyable tactics to teach multiplication facts.
Create Context
While you might not sway students by talking about how often you use multiplication facts in real life, you can give them a context for it. Have them solve word problems where knowing multiplication facts would be useful, for example. Then move on to connecting their "skip counting" knowledge with multiplication facts. Finally, build arrays using graph paper, base 10 blocks or unifix cubes to help them visualize what the facts really mean.
Play Games
Multiplication facts lend themselves to so many games. Students can use index cards to make Memory Match or Go Fish cards of multiplication facts. The whole class can play Buzz, where they sit on their desks and skip count for the teacher's chosen set of facts. If the teacher chooses the number three, then each student who has a multiple of three must say "buzz" instead of the number. So the first student would say "one," the second student would say "two," and the third student would say "buzz," and so on. Another whole class game is to play Multiplication Baseball. Divide the class into two teams and "pitch" to students by asking the "batter" a multiplication fact. If the batter is correct, her team earns a point. If not, her team gets an out. You can play until a certain number of points or until each student has had a turn.
Go Online
Students who might grumble about doing a worksheet will be perfectly happy to practice the same facts on the computer. Many math curricula provide CDs or websites for student use, but there are also a number of sites that provide free multiplication fact games. The Multiplication.com website has a large library of fact games that will appeal to kids with a variety of interests, including fairies, monsters, cooking, ocean life, castles and animals. The FunBrain website has two multiplication fact games, Mathcar Racing and Math Baseball. The Cool Math website also has fun fact games such as Crazy Taxi M-12 and Mathlines: X Factor.
Reward
While learning is its own reward, sometimes kids need a little outside motivation. As the class learns each round of multiplication facts, you can have them earn points toward an ice cream or pizza party. Or you can reward students individually as they learn each round of facts, perhaps with special prizes or privileges. Students could even vote on how they'd like to be rewarded for learning their multiplication facts.
Tags: fact games, multiplication fact, multiplication facts, multiplication facts, student would