multiplication facts

Home

Chat

Blogs

Collection

Directory

Home : 2005 : January : 17

multiplication facts
By Kennedy

My students have avery hard time memorizing multiplication facts, too. I created songs that we sing as we skipcount. They are all sung to familiar melodies, for example, 2s are "Twinkle Twinkle", 3s are "Mary Had A Little
Lamb" and 4s are "Jingle Bells". As we sing, we hold up our fingers and often, move around the room. I;ve found that pairing music and movement really does help these fact stick. My students can resing the songs themselves and apply this to their math work. I've found these songs to be MUCH more effective than the multiplication raps available out there, as students seem to pick up

on and remember these melodies more easily.
I begin with 2s and work up. They usually know 1s, and 5s, and 10s.
Also, for 9s, I teach some students the "finger trick", which is prety difficult to describe here.
Finally, if you aren't familiar with it, check out the Marilyn Burns' Book on multiplication (grades 3 and 4). I think it's called "Math By All Means". All of her books are fabulous resources and I highly reccommend them all! In this particular book My students quickly learned from the game called "Circles and Stars" and they use this as a strategy (time-consuming, but effective) when doing multiplication problems as well.
Hope this helps!