Multiplication Chart

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  • shannon
    Participant

    Are multiplication charts okay to use, when a child is in the beginning stages of learning how to multiply?  Or is this hindering them from figuring it out on their own?

     

    Shannon

    mama_nickles
    Participant

    I’m no expert, but I feel like someone said somewhere that CM recommended students not use a multiplication chart until they have made their own. So going through the process of using manipulatives with 8 8’s being 64, etc. Personally I am just dabbling in multiplication word problems with my son and he is using skip counting to figure them out mentally. I think it’s important to understand what multiplication is, and I think just referring to a chart doesn’t really do that. Others may disagree though! 

    shannon
    Participant

    Actually, that is what I was thinking as well.  I also recall reading that too.  Thank you for the reminder!!Laughing

    DeniseIL
    Participant

    Most multiplication charts epitomize the worst of traditional elementary arithmetic: teaching numbers and arithmetic rules as abstractions to be memorized rather than as common-sense extensions of the child’s own experience and intuition. CM tried to steer parents away from too-early emphasis on such things by encouraging two principles:

    (1) Heavy reliance on word problems that use situations and relationships the children can imagine and through which their common sense and intuition can grasp how the numbers are acting.

    (2) Regular use of manipulatives to act out situations and model relationships and to count up answers that are beyond the child’s mental calculation abilities.

    One problem we have as parents is that our own education was often so formal (abstract) that it crippled our understanding. Many adults don’t know how to recognize multiplication except in a times table or on a worksheet. Look at the richness of multiplication as expressed in the images linked below, and then make for your children, and encourage them to make for you, multiplication word problems using similar variety:

    Multiplication Models

    And also, look at this version of the multiplication table, without numbers. Print it out and show it to your chilidren, without explanation. What do they notice? What do they wonder? What do YOU notice that you may not have thought about before?

    Multiplication Table to Scale

    Finally, here is a link to a multiplication models card game on my blog. You might find it useful—not as helpful at first as word problems and manipulatives, but as an aid for the transition from those to more abstract mental figuring.

    Multiplication Models Card Game

     

    Richele Baburina
    Participant

    Hi Shannon,

    You ladies are right, Charlotte did not have students memorize multiplication tables until they had proven the facts themselves. Here is a post I wrote regarding the formal introduction of multiplication in a CM-school. I’d planned on following that up with a post on constructing a multiplication table but have yet to do so. If you have the SCM mathematics handbook it is laid out in detail there though.

    Warmly,

    Richele

     

    shannon
    Participant

    Hello ladies,

    Sorry I’m so late with a reply….THANK YOU ALL for the tremendous help and the awesome resources!

    Shannon

Viewing 6 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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