This displays the Getting started on page 107 of the student book.

• Asking students to show what 4 x 2 looks like before beginning the Getting started activity may provide useful information about students’ prior understanding of multiplication. Using a variety of materials such as bead frames, Unifix cubes, drawing diagrams of equal groups or constructing arrays all support the development of multiplicative thinking.
• It is important that students know that skip-counting sequences reflect the number of items in equal-sized groups. Some students skip count fluently but have developed misconceptions, often through rote counting without real groups of objects. Examples of misunderstandings may be evident when students point to individual objects and skip-count each one (so a row of 8 objects are counted 2, 4, 6, … 16), or when students always count in 5s, even though the items are in groups of 2 or 10.

This displays a 2 x 3 array and a 3 x 2 array and asks students to notice that they give the same answer.

• The second page of the sheet asks students to write the multiplication equation for an array and another for what the array shows when it has been rotated.

This displays a sheet with a variety of ways that 6 x 2 and 2 x 6 can be shown.

• Students often read 2 x 6 as “two times six” without thinking of what this means. Encouraging students to read equations as two groups of six (or rows of, boxes of, etc.) can support their understanding of multiplication and division.
• Students could suggest other equations that could be written for each of these, e.g. as repeated addition of 2 or doubles of 6.

This link asks students questions about the relationship between x 5 and x 10.

• Encourage students to explain their answer to the second question without doing the multiplication.
• You could ask students to suggest some other x 5 equations that might be easier to solve if they used doubling and halving x 10.

This displays a hundred chart with all the answers to the 2s, 5s, and 10s tables highlighted in different colours. Students are asked what they notice about each set of answers.

• While many children know that the ones digit in the answers for x 2 facts is always even, and that answers for x 5 facts always end with a 5 or a 0 in the ones place, many students do not use this knowledge to check the accuracy of their calculations. Getting into the habit of checking answers at this level has long term benefits for students.