Mental multiplication and division Target Board

The KS2Gems 2021 Target Boards are an interactive and dynamic tool designed to enhance mental arithmetic skills, specifically multiplication and division, for Year 6 students. These boards present a collection of numbers arranged in a grid format, and they serve as the basis for a variety of quick-fire maths exercises. Teachers can display a target board to the entire class or smaller groups, providing children with whiteboards and pens to allow for immediate participation and response. The boards are versatile, allowing for a broad range of maths skills to be practiced in short, engaging sessions, making them an excellent resource for starting or concluding a lesson, as well as for retrieval practice.

Using the target boards, teachers can issue challenges to students, such as multiplying all numbers in a specific row by a set figure or finding numbers that meet certain criteria. This method is particularly effective for differentiating instruction, as teachers can tailor the difficulty of the tasks to suit varying ability levels within the classroom. For instance, one group might be tasked with multiplying numbers in the top row by 100, while another group works on a more complex set of instructions. The target boards not only help students to practice and reinforce their mental arithmetic skills with increasingly large numbers but also encourage quick thinking and problem-solving in a fun and collaborative learning environment.