Multiplications have always been a tricky and scary topic for children. For many years, our education system has demanded students to memorize multiplication tables. Many students all over the world have had negative experiences as they learned how to multiply.
In our classroom, we want our students to feel confident about their abilities and skills. This is why, when introducing Multiplication we wanted students to understand what it is and figure ways to solve them. Our main objective is to teach students different strategies to solve a multiplication and not just memorize them.
To achieve this, we have been working all week with different ways to interpret multiplication. Our students’ favorite activity was using counters to model an equation. As they did so, they started to figure out that they had two different ways to represent each equation. While they were playing, and without being aware of mathematical properties; they discovered the commutative property.
Understanding the process on how to obtain an answer is more important than memorizing every single fact in the multiplication tables. If our children understand how to do it, they will be able to solve any multiplicationequation even if they have not memorized it or learned it.