Every year I have a few students who struggle with multiplication, be it remembering their multiplication facts or understanding how multiply larger numbers, and it's not just a 6th grade problem. I once had a jr high teacher storm my room demanding to see our math book for proof my previous class had covered multiplication, and another jr high math teacher declared to her class I must have skipped that chapter (they were totally kidding and the kids totally didn't get it... SO MANY parent phone calls that night...).
This past year I got a crash course in multiplication intervention thanks to a sweet young man who started our first math lesson off by SHRIEKING "I won't do it!!! I WON'T!!" as soon as he saw multiplication problems on the board. Over the next few days I learned "won't" meant "didn't know how to" and had bad experienced heaped on bad experience that we were going to have to wade through.
He wasn't the first. I doubt he'll be the last, and I'm not entirely convinced he'll remember any of what he learned when he walks through the door of his 7th grade math class next year.
1. Reteach: I always start the year with a whole class lesson reteaching the "standard multiplication algorithm." This is a great way for me to assess where students are at with multiplication so I can adjust instruction from there. I do a repeat of lesson the following day and provide scaffolded algorithm worksheets to those that struggled the previous day. Sometimes that's all it takes, by the time we move onto decimal multiplication on day 3 they're sailing right along. However, sometimes they need more.
2. Reset: The "dream catcher method" has been my go to reset method since I first started teaching 6th grade. Also called lattice or the Japanese Method, it focuses on the basic facts and looks nothing like the standard format, which can be the most important thing for a struggling student. Below is a video going over it in more detail.
3. Review: Multiplication facts are the foundation of more mathematical processes than I care to try to count, so fluency in those facts are critical for mathematical success. Because of this I put a year long focus on multiplication facts and display them in several formats around the room to get as much exposure
as possible. I display the multiplication fact families as posters at the front of my room, which were created by To the Square Inch and can be viewed at this link. I use a math reference sheet including a multiplication chart as the back cover of my student math notebook, which was created by Teaching on Lemon Lane and can be viewed at this link. At the frustration of one of my students I also added a column style multiplication fact family reference sheet to my room this year. I have them printed double sided and stored in a pocket chart at the front of my room. The game Multiplication Squares, which was created by Claire Lambert and can be viewed at this link, is a year round feature in my classroom and students are encouraged to play it a an early finisher activity.
Note: 2 & 3 are interchangeable in my book, and it
4: Refer: If a student is still struggling I refer them to our Title I aide with a daily fluency practice to work on for 9 weeks and reassess. My go to fluency practice is the 36 Weeks of Math Fluency Practice made by Wife Teacher Mommy. I typically have students start with the 4th grade fluency practice, and after completing 5 worksheets in a row at 80% or more they move on to the 5th grade fluency practice. I usually remove them from Title 1 once they've completed 5 5th grade worksheets in a row at 80% or more. These fluency practice sheets are also a great pre-assessment to help determine where students are struggling.
I hope my process for helping students struggling with multiplication will be of use.
