Teaching Strategies for Teaching

Multiplication and Division

Multiplication:

1. Be aware that elementary school student’s main experience of multiplication is through the structure of repeated aggregation.
2. Do not focus on whether a % b means a set of a of b or b sets of a. At this stage the commutative property and multiplication rules are more important.
3. Recognize that the key language to be developed in the repeated aggregation structure includes so many groups (or sets) of so many, how many (how much) altogether, per, and each.
4. Give special attention to helping students to use the word per with confidence.
5. Work with your students to establish the commutative principle in multiplication, and encourage them to use it in recalling results from the multiplication tables.
6. Use rectangular arrays frequently to illustrate and to support explanations of multiplication and particularly to reinforce the communicative principle.
7. Make sure your students know their multiplication tables up to ten before they try larger numbers.
8. Value and encourage informal methods of tackling multiplication statements that build on students’ personal confidence with number relationships.

Division:

1. Ensure that students are able to connect the operation of division with a wide range of problems, including structures of equal sharing, the inverse of multiplication and ratio.
2. Emphasis division problems built on questions, such as how many can I afford? That incorporate the idea of repeated subtraction from a given quantity, and how many do I need?, that incorporate the idea of repeated addition to reach an target.
3. Teach students that the informal repeated-subtraction method for dividing first by using single digit numbers. Then go to two digit numbers.
4. Share and encourage informal approaches to various division questions.