If you’re a 3rd grade teacher, there’s one thing you understand. And that’s how important it is for students to become fluent with multiplication. Having a strong foundation and understanding of math facts will help 3rd graders with other new skills they’ll learn this year. In fact, I’d say teaching multiplication is the single most important skill you’ll be teaching your students this year!
So today I’m sharing with you six multiplication strategies for third grade. These strategies are essential for developing an understanding of what it means to multiply. They are also tools students can use to help solve the trickier math facts they don’t yet have memorized, especially when they can’t just rely on their multiplication table.
Let’s look at each multiplication strategy and discover fun multiplication activities that you can do during your whole group or small groups lessons to reinforce these different strategies.
1. Equal Groups
Understanding multiplication through equal groups is a fundamental concept for third graders. To practice this strategy, create a hands-on activity where students use counters or small objects to represent equal groups. Whatever objects you decide to use can make for a fun lesson! For example, have students group 12 toy cars into 3 equal groups and write a multiplication sentence to match. You’ll totally have their attention when they see you whip out some HotWheels!
2. Arrays
The next multiplication strategy is arrays. Arrays are a visual model that will help students grasp multiplication. Encourage students to create arrays using colorful manipulatives like blocks or tiles. For a fun activity, challenge students to create an array garden by arranging flower cutouts in equal rows and columns, then write multiplication equations based on the array.
If your school has tiles or bricks that are arranged in arrays, you can go on an array hunt around your campus and look for them. Students can write down the multiplication equation each array represents and solve for the product. (Hint–windows often contain arrays!)
3. Fact Families
The properties of multiplication are also taught in 3rd grade math! Fact families help students see the relationship between multiplication and division. Learning fact families is essential for a later understanding of division and for solving for unknowns in multiplication and division equations. In fact, thinking of fact families is one of my favorite division strategies to teach my class.
To introduce fact families, you can begin by teaching the commutative property of multiplication which teaches that order doesn’t matter when you multiply. (3×5 and 5×3 are equal.)
Have students work in pairs to create fact family houses. Each house should have four numbers that form related multiplication and division facts. For instance, 2, 4, 8, and 2 (2×4=8, 4×2=8, 8÷2=4, 8÷4=2). Let students be creative and make their houses as fancy as they want. Use construction paper, markers, and stickers to make it even more engaging!
4. Tape Diagrams
Tape diagrams, also known as bar models or strip diagrams, are visual models for representing multiplication problems. Provide students with word problems and ask them to draw tape diagrams to represent the information. To make it enjoyable, challenge students to create a comic strip using tape diagrams to solve multiplication scenarios.
5. Skip Counting
Skip counting is a foundational skill that supports multiplication fluency. Using number lines, you can show equal-sized skips to solve a multiplication problem. See the example below.
Here’s an activity to engage students in a skip-counting scavenger hunt around the classroom. Hide number cards in different locations, and as students find them, they must skip count to determine the missing numbers in the multiplication sequence. This is a great way for students to get up and moving and have a good time while they are practicing one of the different ways to multiply!
6. Repeated Addition
Relating multiplication to repeated addition helps students understand the concept of multiplication as groups of equal values. To add a twist to repeated addition practice, turn it into a storytelling activity. Ask students to create a story where characters encounter repeated addition situations. For example, a squirrel, preparing for hibernation, is collecting acorns each day, with the story progressing by adding the daily collections to find the total number of acorns gathered.
Multiplication Strategies Anchor Chart & Note Taking
Need an anchor chart to display these strategies?⭐You can use the anchor chart in this resource.⭐ There is a blank version included for note-taking! Print these at 90% scaled, trim off the margins, and then you can glue it in math interactive notebooks. The anchor chart makes a great reference tool for a math interactive notebook!
By incorporating these creative and interactive activities into your lessons, you can make learning multiplication strategies a memorable experience for your third grade students.
Remember, a mix of hands-on tasks, visual models, and collaborative activities can give your students great conceptual understanding of multiplication.
⭐Want to practice multiplication strategies with your students? Check out this resource!⭐
