The purpose of this activity is for students to self-assess their own fluency with multiplication facts and practice the ones that are less familiar. Students are given a set of expressions. They sort them into categories of “know it right away,” “can find it quickly,” or “don’t know it yet.” Then they identify products they don’t know (or don’t know well) yet, discuss strategies for finding those products, and practice using those strategies.

• “What do you notice about the numbers in the multiplication facts you are still working on?”
• “Can you think of a related multiplication fact that might be helpful?”

• “What are some useful strategies for finding products you didn’t know yet?” (Think of a product I already know and use it to find the one I didn’t know yet. Imagine equal-size groups. Break the expressions into smaller numbers, find those products, and then add them.)

The purpose of this activity is for students to apply multiplication fluency within 100 to find factors of multiples within the range of 1–36. This game is Stage 1 of the center Find the Number. In this stage, students find all the factors for a given number.

One player chooses a number on the gameboard (1–36) and gets that many points. The second player covers all the factors of that number. The score of the second player is the sum of all of the covered factors.

Players take turns choosing the starting number. A player who chooses a number without any uncovered factors loses their next turn. When there are no numbers remaining with uncovered factors, the player with more points wins.

• “What strategies were helpful for the game?” (Choose numbers with fewer factors to keep your opponent’s score low.)