These fact cards are designed to help students attain mastery of the first level of their multiplication facts. Multiplication Level 1 consists of the 1, 2, 3, 5 and 10 times tables. Students must have mastery of their addition and subtraction facts through 20 before starting multiplication fact practice.
Students must have mastery (automatic recall) of their math facts so that they can focus on the harder problem solving processes. A student has automatic recall of a fact when he or she has practiced the fact enough with effective strategies to be able to produce a correct answer immediately. The student knows the fact automatically when he or she no longer needs a strategy to figure it out; he or she no longer has to pause and think.
Before learning the 5x table in a picture, the student should model the 5x table in rows or columns of equal groups of 5 with concrete objects such as counting tiles or blocks.
The student should see the pattern of equal groups in the rows or columns. In this example, the groups of 5 are shown in the rows. The student should learn how to read a table from top to bottom, adding groups of 5, or bottom to top, subtracting groups of 5.
“Do you know 5 groups of 5? If 5 groups of 5 is 25, then how much is 6 groups of 5? Add 5 to 25 to get 30”. This strategy, shown in the picture above, is called using the nearest fact. The student should see that it would take much longer to figure out this fact by starting at the top of the table and counting (5, 10, 15, etc) than finding the nearest fact and adding a row.
A student should progress through the fact card arithmetic levels in the sequence below. He or she must have mastery of prior levels before progressing to the next level.