Sometimes it can help children’s understanding of maths and numbers if they are shown a completely different way of approaching a calculation. In Year 6 most children will be familiar with the standard written method of multiplication, but this method is far from the only one which can be used. It just happens to be quite an efficient method which is relatively easy to use.
The great Egyptian civilisation used a very different method to work out multiplication calculations. Rather than learning tables, they just got very good at adding up pairs of the same number (or doubling as we know it today). One of the reasons for this is that they did not have multiplication ‘tables’.
The method is quite long, but nevertheless quite easy if you are good at addition and it is explained in detail on the first worksheet.
Thank you, this is excellent! Perfect for my history of math class I’m teaching a group of 4th and 5th graders