We have taught students in grades four and five for so long and one trend we’ve noticed is that students cannot retain their multiplication times tables. What is happening to those little brains? Or is it because we teach these facts differently?
When we went to school, math drills were all the rage. But to be honest, the stress of answering sixty multiplication questions in less than a minute was horrible. And I was lucky because I knew my times tables, but I just couldn’t write fast enough no matter how hard I tried. Those drills weren’t an assessment of my math skills. They were an assessment of how quickly I could write.
And don’t even get me started about the time I wrote a zero but it was messy and looked like a six. Uggg! So I knew I couldn’t give my students math drills. Here’s what I decided to do instead.
[Read more…] about Multiplication Strategies That Work
As you know, YouTube is a wealth of resources for professional learning, for fun and to learn how to fix your broken gas dryer (ninjas like to fix their own things after all). Using YouTube in the classroom with your students is also a powerful tool (assuming you are allowed to)! Schools and districts who block YouTube are living in the wrong century! To us, it would be like banning a library.
