There is easy skip counting for multiplying by 2, 5, 10. Skip counting for 3 and 4 are often more challenging. There is the finger rule and related rules for multiplying by 9. I posted about rules for 6s and 8s (and scaffolding for the rule for 9s). 7s work for students who watch football but otherwise those are tricky.
A team member and I discussed this situation and she pointed out that the student can simply skip count by the other factor instead of 7…except for 7×7 and 7×8, along with 8×8 being problematic. Here is how I am addressing these 3 special cases. I focus on leveraging what they know about the other problems and then adding or subtracting, e.g., below the student focuses on 6×7 then adds another 7. Similar approach with the other two cases.
Below is an excerpt from a WORD document with the scaffolding for this. It includes the same scaffolding for all three cases.
Below is how I implement. The student completes the scaffolded problem and then applies to the steps to the unscaffolded problem. I present the two together periodically and then fade the scaffolding and mix in the special cases with the other multiplication problems.
