Multiplying and Dividing mentally worksheet

A worksheet designed for Key Stage 2 pupils focuses on enhancing their mental multiplication and division skills through a series of interactive activities. In Activity 1, students are provided with whiteboards and pens to write down all the multiplication facts for a given number that has more than two factor pairs, reinforcing their understanding of multiplication tables. The activity encourages children to recognise different combinations that result in the same product, thus consolidating their arithmetic fluency.

Subsequent activities introduce a variety of challenges to further develop mental arithmetic strategies. For instance, in Activity 2, children select single-digit cards at random and multiply them together, discussing the order of operations and the strategies they used to simplify the process. Activity 3 involves using doubling as a multiplication strategy and halving for division, with a mix of single and two-digit numbers. This is followed by Activity 4, where students use digit cards to write out times tables and then combine them to work out the times table for the total of the two cards. Finally, Activity 5 tests the children's ability to deduce a dividend from a given division calculation. These exercises aim to strengthen pupils' grasp of place value and their ability to derive facts quickly for mental calculations, including multiplying by 0 and 1, dividing by 1, and multiplying three numbers together.