4 Reasons Why Learning Multiplication Facts Are Important

As students are learning multiplication facts, many parents have likely heard the following phrases from their children:

“Why do I need to know this? I’ll just use a calculator.”
“When will I ever need this in real life?”

As adults, we recognize how important it is to recall multiplication facts, but how do you answer your students when they ask you why they need to know their multiplication facts? Here are 4 answers that may help you navigate that question.

Why Are Multiplication Facts Important?

1) They Are a Stepping Stone

Much like building a house, you need a strong foundation to build math skills that will withstand the test of time. Along with addition and subtraction, multiplication is one of those foundational skill sets that needs to be secure before moving on to more complex math lessons. It’s not uncommon for students who are missing this strong foundational knowledge to begin struggling right around the time they are learning long division.

Math is sequential, and concepts are built upon one another. With a solid knowledge base of foundational math facts, it becomes easier to learn new concepts.

2) They Boost Confidence

As students progress to more complex math problems, those who have not mastered multiplication facts have an increasingly hard time completing these problems. If these facts are missing from their knowledge base, the constant struggle and frustration can result in your student losing their confidence to learn and succeed with math.

Taking the time to ensure facts are committed to memory or pausing to address any gaps with multiplication fact mastery can help boost your student’s confidence. When your student is working on a complex problem and is able to pull the needed facts from memory to help them solve the problem, that moment is often a turning point for the wary math student.

3) Knowing Your Facts Helps You Stay Engaged

Can you relate to this situation?

You’re working on solving a complex problem and get to a point where you are just mentally exhausted and need to step away. Your mental energy has been spent, and you are no longer engaged in solving the problem.

Students can experience the same thing when working on new math concepts. As your student works to solve a math problem, they will often need to pause and reallocate their mental energy to calculate a fact. If, in order to calculate that fact, they need to skip count, consult a multiplication chart, use a calculator, or use some other strategy, they are increasing the possibility of errors and increasing the time spent on the problem. This increase in both the time and effort often leads to frustration.

By being able to immediately recall multiplication facts, your student’s mental energy can stay fully engaged on the problem at hand, and their mental energy is not consumed by switching back and forth to work on both math facts and the new concept.

4) Multiplication Is Used in Real Life

The earliest examples of multiplication tables can be traced back to over 4,000 years ago by the Babylonians, who utilized these tables to help them build and trade. Your student is likely not trading furs or using bricks to build a home, but there are a number of ways that they can use multiplication in everyday life.

• Doubling or tripling a recipe – How many cups or tablespoons will you need to make a double batch of brownies?
• Setting the table – each table can seat 6 people, you’ve set 6 tables. How many people will you be able to invite to sit?
• Chores and screen time – For every chore completed, you receive 5 minutes of screen time. On Wednesday, you’ve completed 3 chores; how much screen time have you collected?
• Soccer practice snacks – There are 8 players on the soccer team, so it’s your turn to bring a snack to practice. Each player will get a juice, a piece of fruit, and a sweet treat (3 items). How many items will you need to bring to practice?

Often, multiplication facts are presented with rote memorization drills, leading to students’ common questions of, “Why do I need this?” One of Demme Learning’s objectives is to develop programs that focus on mastering concepts but also building understanding. Demme Learning’s programs go beyond just memorization to show how the concepts can be applied practically in real life.