This week’s mental arithmetic questions for year 3 cover just multiplication and division. Year 3 is the start of the learning ‘times tables’, and by the end of the year children should be confident with at least the 2, 5 and 10 times tables as well as developing 3x and 4x.
Some teachers argue that children should also learn the ‘division tables’. These are the equivalent facts for division. For example, the dividing by 5 table would go like this:
5 divided by 5 is 1
10 divided by 5 is 2
15 divided by 5 is 3
20 divided by 5 is 4
25 divided by 5 is 5
30 divided by 5 is 6
35 divided by 5 is 7
40 divided by 5 is 8
45 divided by 5 is 9
50 divided by 5 is 10
Although it must be said that children who really know the ‘times tables’ off by heart can very rapidly work out these facts. Whichever way they do it children should be able to answer a question such as; ’16 divided by 2′ in a second or less.