Before you print
Recall speed on the tables that stay slow the longest
A speed grid of the tables children find hardest, the same ones that checks like the UK's Year 4 Multiplication Tables Check lean on. Time it gently once the facts are secure, and never before.
The skill this sheet trains
Almost every child knows the 2, 5 and 10 tables early, because those have obvious patterns. The 6, 7, 8, 9 and 12 tables do not, and they are where the work sits. This sheet contains forty mixed facts drawn only from those five, shuffled so no run of answers can be predicted from the one before. What it trains is retrieval rather than calculation: the difference between knowing that 7 times 8 is 56 and being able to work it out. On the soroban that distinction matters more than it does on paper, because multiplication there is a sequence of single-digit products placed on the right rods, and any fact that has to be derived stops the sequence dead.
Using the sheet
Untimed first, always. A child should complete a full pass with no clock and no comment until every answer is correct. Only after two clean untimed passes is it worth introducing a stopwatch, and then as their own record to beat rather than anyone else's. Four to five minutes is a good target for forty facts. Finished, in the sense that matters, is forty correct answers with no visible pause on any single item, which is a different standard from forty correct answers.
What to watch for
The useful signal on this sheet is not the errors, it is the hesitations. Mark the items where the child paused rather than the ones they got wrong; those two sets often barely overlap. A pause almost always sits in one place, commonly the 7s and the 8s where they meet, at 7 times 8, 8 times 7 and 8 times 8. Write those three on a card and rehearse them alone. Reprinting the whole grid teaches thirty seven facts that were never the problem.
Where it sits in the course
Tables sit alongside the middle of the graded course rather than inside one stage of it, and they become load-bearing from Level 5, where multiplication on the frame begins in earnest. See where multiplication enters the levels.
Forty facts is a sample rather than the whole set, so when a gap turns out to sit outside these five tables, the full multiplication chart covers every table from 1 to 20.
What to print next
If a child is strong on tables but has never touched a frame, start at the beginning instead: Reading the Beads.
Times Tables Sprint
Forty mixed facts from the 6, 7, 8, 9 and 12 tables
Confident · Ages 8 to 12
Name: ______________________
Date: ______________________
- 1.6 × 4 = ______
- 2.7 × 8 = ______
- 3.9 × 6 = ______
- 4.12 × 3 = ______
- 5.8 × 8 = ______
- 6.7 × 6 = ______
- 7.9 × 9 = ______
- 8.12 × 6 = ______
- 9.6 × 6 = ______
- 10.8 × 4 = ______
- 11.7 × 7 = ______
- 12.9 × 4 = ______
- 13.12 × 8 = ______
- 14.6 × 9 = ______
- 15.8 × 7 = ______
- 16.7 × 4 = ______
- 17.9 × 8 = ______
- 18.12 × 4 = ______
- 19.6 × 8 = ______
- 20.8 × 3 = ______
- 21.7 × 9 = ______
- 22.9 × 3 = ______
- 23.12 × 12 = ______
- 24.6 × 7 = ______
- 25.8 × 6 = ______
- 26.7 × 12 = ______
- 27.9 × 7 = ______
- 28.12 × 9 = ______
- 29.6 × 12 = ______
- 30.8 × 9 = ______
- 31.7 × 3 = ______
- 32.9 × 12 = ______
- 33.12 × 7 = ______
- 34.6 × 3 = ______
- 35.8 × 12 = ______
- 36.7 × 5 = ______
- 37.9 × 5 = ______
- 38.12 × 5 = ______
- 39.6 × 5 = ______
- 40.8 × 5 = ______
Answers: 1) 24 · 2) 56 · 3) 54 · 4) 36 · 5) 64 · 6) 42 · 7) 81 · 8) 72 · 9) 36 · 10) 32 · 11) 49 · 12) 36 · 13) 96 · 14) 54 · 15) 56 · 16) 28 · 17) 72 · 18) 48 · 19) 48 · 20) 24 · 21) 63 · 22) 27 · 23) 144 · 24) 42 · 25) 48 · 26) 84 · 27) 63 · 28) 108 · 29) 72 · 30) 72 · 31) 21 · 32) 108 · 33) 84 · 34) 18 · 35) 96 · 36) 35 · 37) 45 · 38) 60 · 39) 30 · 40) 40