Making Math Accessible for All Students
The idea is that the student will have to count squares and eventually skip count by how many rows. By doing so the student is more engaged (or less passive) in determining the product byy engaging the visual representation. I am interested in feedback and will revise if this could be useful.
Here is a link to the document.
A common method to learn multiplication facts is through skip counting. In turn, this is a means of learning division facts (see next paragraph). The challenge for many students is they struggle to learn the skip count routines or cannot engage brute force memorization effectively (e.g., have a working memory deficit).
The challenge with multiplication by skip counting is keeping track of two sets of numbers while memorizing the order of the skip counting. That is another example of the rubbing belly and patting head phenomena in math where one extra task demand undermines the process.
A hack I use to scaffold this process to reduce the task demand during the learning process is to provide rows from a multiplication chart (below) for the facts of focus (3s and 4s in this example). The same approach can be used for division facts, e.g., in the image below right I have the student choose the row of the divisor (3) and then skip count to until reaching the dividend (12). The idea is the student has less task demands while learning the process and seeing the number pattern. This allows for more repetitions or rehearsal.
For students more severely impacted by a disability or who simply struggle with the patting head and rubbing belly of skip counting, the appropriate times table row can be provided for each problem to allow the student to circle (below). This allows for a hands on approach with even less task demand. You could also laminate the rows to make them reusable in lieu of several consumable ones requiring more paper. I like the consumable as I use that for data collection.
