Math: Beginning One Digit x Two Digit Multiplication

We can solve multiplication facts, like 6 x 3 = 18.

And recently, we've been working to solve extended facts, like 6 x 20 = 120. In extended facts, we use our knowledge of facts to solve problems using multiples of 10, 100, and 100.

Now we are taking it one step further, to solve a one digit x two digit problem, but where the two digit number is not a multiple of 10.

Here’s an example of the type of problem I’m talking about: 6 x 23.

In class today, we learned how to solve this problem by applying what we already know. We showed our work in a concrete way, as follows.

First, we broke apart the two-digit number into 20 and 3. If we multiply each of these parts by 6, and then put the parts back together, we’ll get our answer.

Next, we record our work of multiplying each part by 6. We use our fact power to multiply 3x6 and our knowledge of fact extensions to multiply 20x6.

Finally, we take our two parts, 120 and 18, and add them back together to come to our final answer.

We start out with this visual strategy as a bridge towards the "Partial Products" algorithm, which will eventually become our main strategy for multi-digit multiplication. I hope this helps on the home-front as your child is moving into some new territory.