Today I tutored a third grade boy who goes to Hermosa Valley School. He is on Spring Break but his mom brought him in to work on multiplication and division problems for math. Usually we work on his homework but he was caught up on his homework for the following week so we concentrated all on math.
We did not have any division flashcards in the office, but we did have multiplication ones so we worked on multiplication first. I let my student study the flashcards for 15 minutes and then I quizzed him on the answers for 15 minutes and re did the ones he was not sure about. I wrote down the ones he got wrong so he could study them at home. 8 x 7 = 56 was the hardest one for him to remember.
He knew most of the answers, the easiest being the 1’s times tables – 5 times tables. He knew all the tricks like using your hands for the 9s times tables.
When he didn’t know any answer or did not want to figure it out, he would just guess, even though I knew that he knew the answer. I then made him fill out a worksheet of multiplication tables that he got to take home and look over after his session. The ones he really struggled with were the 12s times tables, which are difficult for any 3rd grader.
Then we moved on to division. I printed out worksheets since we did not have division flashcards, so we went over different worksheets. He struggled more with division, but he said he enjoyed division more than multiplication.
I let him have 15 minutes to fill out the division worksheet and then we went over it for 15 minutes. It was perfect timing. It took him a little longer on the division since you have to think backwards in a sense. He was in great spirits and knows that if he thinks about it, he can get the answer right.
