Tips for memorizing multiplication facts

Last month, I encouraged everyone to learn their facts. Brian Foley responded by encouraging the teaching of memorization, but he failed to include a link to his own post on memorizing multiplication facts.

Brian’s post is a great start, but I’d actually change it slightly. I’d actually make myself flash cards for each “family”. One card would read 0 * 3. The next would read 1 * 3. And so forth and so on.

Once I felt I honestly knew my facts in order, I’d shuffle the cards and try saying them to myself out of order. After completing cards for  each family (1 – 12), put them into one big deck and practice them. (You can also blend smaller groups of cards together if you want to work on a specific set of numbers.) Rote memory only works if we can take it out of context.

This would also work for addition, subtraction, and division if you’re struggling with any of those.