Let's multiply and divide - The Complete Series (5 lessons)

Building on your class's growing understanding of multiplication and division, these teaching inputs and activities equip your KS1 children with a variety of methods for solving multiplication and division calculations with greater confidence and accuracy. Through the choice of differentiated learning activities in every lesson, learners have opportunities to use resources, talk about their reasoning using mathematical language, and solve problems with their peers.

To kick off a week of multiplication and division learning, start by challenging your class to make arrays using Maths cubes, peg boards, or whatever you have available!

Children will go on to consider how multiplication may be done in any order – which is helpful if you find some times tables calculations easier than others! After that, there's a choice of differentiated learning activities where children may either use arrays to help them solve and/or change the order of multiplication calculations, or take part in a challenging group activity where they may discuss some common misconceptions about multiplication, attempting to prove them wrong.

Building on your class's growing knowledge of multiplication and division methods, this lesson focuses on creating 'fact families' which show how the numbers in division and multiplication calculations are related. Children will also learn how making fact families can help them solve calculations, especially if they find certain multiplications or divisions easier than others.

Building on prior learning, this lesson starts by recapping how to solve multiplication calculations by making or drawing rectangular arrays. The included slides go on to show how a number line may also be used to solve multiplications. There's also a choice of differentiated activities in which your class can practise their newly learnt multiplying skills.

Recap making and using rectangular arrays to help solve division calculations, then go on to learn how division can also be done by 'jumping' down a number line. After that, challenge your children to put what they've just learnt into practice during either of the two included, differentiated activities.

In this final lesson, children may put what they've learnt during the week into practice by solving multiplication and division word problems using physical resources, or number lines, to help them.