7 Easy & Stress Free Teaching Multiplication Strategies For Kids!

Are your kids struggling with learning multiplication and starting to become anxious or overwhelmed? Then you need to try these teaching multiplication strategies with your kids 7 hands-on activities for arrays, groups of, repeated addition and more.

Teaching multiplication can be a difficult concept for teachers to teach and for students to understand. Many math programs jump too quickly to focus on the recall and memorization of times tables rather than teaching a range of multiplicative strategies.

This means that when the memory fails, and a fact cannot be recalled, kids have nothing to fall back on. They cannot use multiplicative strategies to help them to arrive at a solution because they have not been taught them!

Teaching Multiplication Strategies

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Multiplication Strategies for kids

Teaching Multiplication strategies empowers students to solve problems and carry out calculations with confidence and understanding.

Although memorization of number facts is desirable, it should not be the only teaching strategy, and students need to be taught strategies to use for when their memory fails!

Activities For teaching Multiplication

Teaching Multiplication Strategies … much more than “Shoot Out!”

I am not a fan of fast fact math games like ‘sheriff” or ‘shoot out’ and it doesn’t help teach students about multiplication! There I have said that out loud!

There seems to be a misguided notion from students and some teachers and parents that speed in the recall of facts defines your capabilities and ability as a math person.

I have come across many people who think that if you are fast at fact recall then you’re good at math.

Well let’s set the record straight… this is NOT TRUE!

And I am on a mission to change this terrible point of view with parents, students and teachers alike and you can read more on the research here

Related Post: Essential Children’s Multiplication World Books

Teaching Multiplication Strategies

The first sign that someone thinks speed is an indicator of math ability are seemingly “FUN” games that focus on the fast recall of facts.

These pressure situations actually do more harm than good, especially for levels of confidence, risk-taking and Growth Mindset and need to be used with caution, if at all, in the classroom!

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These games only build speed in the recall of the facts that the students already know, they do not help them with the facts they don’t know nor does it build any understanding of the multiplication concept.

In fact kids who only know facts and who have been rushed into recall before developing understanding, probably wouldn’t know a real-life multiplication task if it was right under their nose!

Click the image for hole punch math activity centers.

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How to Teach Multiplication {Stress-FREE!}

And what about the slower, less confident student? They may actually know the answer but can’t perform due to huge amounts of stress and anxiety.

For these students speed focussed activities don’t help their learning but facilitate math anxiety and stress, and the feeling that they are not good at maths, it may even make them HATE maths!

So what is the answer? Teaching a range of Multiplication Strategies!

And yes students do need recall and speed, but this should come once your kids have explored the multiplication process.

So please don’t write a student off as ‘not good at maths’ because they can’t recall with speed, I still cannot recall 7 x 8, to this day, without saying in my head 6 x 8 is 48 so 7 x 8 is 56 !

Children’s Books With A Multiplication Theme

7 Multiplication Strategies

Here are 7 proven strategies that make learning multiplication easy for kids.

These strategies build on what kids have already learnt about addition and will help them transition from additive to multiplicative understandings. Click here to take a look at our Best Selling Teaching Multiplication Strategies kit that includes posters and activities.

Teaching programs need to include explicit teaching of these strategies as well as opportunities to apply the strategies in problem solving situations.

We created a series of teacher videos to help explain each strategy. Watch the videos below to learn more about:

Repeated Addition
Equal Groups
Skip Counting
Arrays
Commutative Property
Italian Lattice Multiplication
Multiplication Facts

Repeated Addition

Repeated addition is the easiest way to solve multiplication problems but it requires students to be able to interpret a multiplication problem correctly.

For example the problem 3 x 4 would be 3 added together 4 times.

Start by using materials, pictures and then a number sentence to help students make the connection 3 x 4 is actually 4 + 4 + 4 explain why it’s not 3 + 4 or 4 + 4+ 4 or 3 – 4.

Teaching Repeated Addition Video

Click the pink text or the image above for more ideas on teaching repeated addition in our other posts.

Equal Groups

Teaching kids to understand Equal Groups is the first step when introducing multiplication.

So using 3 x 4 as our number problem students would be taught to interpret this as 3 groups of 4 and represent it with concrete materials then drawings.

Teaching Equal Groups Video

Skip Counting

Skip Counting is actually a strategy for counting collections more efficiently. It is also a simple way to link repeated addition and multiplication.

Using the skip counting strategy also helps your kids to match a rote learnt chant to the physical action of counting.

Teaching Skip Counting Video

Click to grab this free Skip counting Activity

Skip Counting Printables

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Arrays

Arrays are useful models to link repeated addition, groups of & skip counting together as a way of performing multiplication. Use objects, stickers or dots arranged in columns and rows.

Each column must have the same number of objects as the other columns.

It is an efficient way of ordering materials to count and by adding another column each time students can see the multiplication facts growing progressively.

This model helps build a visual image to aid memorisation and we have a ton of free ideas and printables to help you teach arrays.

Click the image for your Free Printables & Teaching Multiplication As Repeated Addition Lesson Plan For FREE!

Teaching Arrays Video

Commutative Property

The Commutative Property is a great way of cutting learning multiplication (and addition) facts in half.

This property applies to the order in which computation is carried out and highlights that changing the order in which digits are multiplied, will not change the answer so 3 x 4 = 12 and so does 4 x 3

Teaching The Commutative Property Video

Multiplication Fact Mini Book

Here’s a little multiplication booklet that your students can make to help them with multiplication fact fluency. Get printable instructions for our multiplication printable number games booklets