Multiplication Hand Tricks–Multiplying by 4s
Again by popular request, here is a video showing how students can use their fingers to multiply by four. This is my second video ever! I think I’m getting better at it! 🙂
This video was made in response to an earlier blog post here. Watch this for professional development, or allow your students to watch it for a brand new strategy for their math “tool box”. Enjoy!
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKC7bgV9W3Y[/embedyt]
You may also like to watch this video about multiplying by 3s.
Multiplication Hand Tricks–Multiplying by 3s and 4s
Congratulations! You get to watch my very first video ever! This video is a result of my most viewed blog post ever You can see this post here. It is the post with my multiplication hands, which show how to multiply by three on your fingers.
One of the comments suggested I make a video for this post to explain it further. At the time I wasn’t comfortable with video nor did I have the equipment to video. So, just recently I decided to take this advice. After about 10 takes, I finally decided to settle on this video. I may come back and redo it later to make it better, but I’m at the point where I feel it is better to have something up than nothing at all. I really hope you learn something while watching to help your students! 🙂
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TRjHG0GVEo[/embedyt]
And now…..how students can use their fingers to multiply by four. This is my second video ever! I think I’m getting better at it! 🙂
This video was made in response to an earlier blog post here. Watch this for professional development, or allow your students to watch it for a brand new strategy for their math “tool box”. Enjoy!
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKC7bgV9W3Y[/embedyt]
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You Can Learn Something From a First Grader…
This past week I was asking a first grader how she had solved a math problem. When she showed me how she had used her fingers, I realized something amazing. She actually saw doubles on her fingers. I had never paid attention to exactly how students had used their fingers to solve problems. She used each hand as the separate addends in a problem, but more specifically she used each hand as the addends of an addition problem with doubles. So for example, she was easily able to see that 4 and 4 make 8 and that two more fingers (doubles plus 2) make 10– put one more finger up on each hand to make five fingers on each hand or ten fingers altogether. She used this strategy fluently, but it had never dawned on me to see patterns with doubles on two hands. I had always thought of the number four as just four fingers on one hand alone–not as two fingers on two different hands.
How Can You Use Your Hands as Multiplication Manipulatives?
Another math coach related to me today the story of how a student she taught had named fingers sections as something that comes in groups of threes. She took this concept and helped students use this to develop multiplication strategies to learn their threes multiplication tables. Fours multiplication tables can be learned as well if students include counting the top part of their palm. See the pictures below for more clarification.
Update September 2017: Â Due to one of the comments below, I made a video describing how this works with the 3s multiplication facts. Â Click here for the video.
