Don’t Take This for Granted When Teaching 5’s Facts Multiplication

Most people assume the 5’s are easy for students to learn because they can count easily by 5’s.  That may be true, but that still requires counting to occur.  That is still not the best method for them to become fluent because the method isn’t efficient.  Now, if your students can tell time, then they can easily become fluent with their facts by looking at the clock and thinking of the middle of the clock as having a “x5” literally taped in the middle.  Then they can visualize the numbers around the edges as the other factor.  The product or answer will be the number of minutes that each number  on the clock represents.  Look at the picture for further clarification.  I must say that you may think that students will naturally draw the correlation between the clock and their 5 multiplication facts.  However, this is not always the case and may need to be pointed out especially to your lower performing students.