Multiple levels of students in Math and Multiplication

Teaching math in an adult learner classroom can be particularly challenging because the disparity between levels can be very wide. To resolve this problem, our teachers tend to create small learning groups, which can mean the need t0 prepare several lessons for the same day as well as the provision of many smaller tasks (fillers) which students can do while they wait for their turn in the teaching cycle.

Even though the students may have advanced to division and fractions, or even geometry, they may still be lacking some basic multiplication skills. It can be hard to ask an adult to drill the multiplication tables, but they need to have the ability to multiply quickly mastered in order to assist their skill in estimating for division. It is unfortunate that students are slowing working through more advanced problems simply because they did not develop a mastery of the multiplication tables.

Here are some websites with resources to support multilevel class preparation for multiplication. You may want to distribute these activities to the more advanced students as filler to give them time to develop mastery.

The site, Multiplication.com - Multiplication Worksheets, has a nice set of worksheets, flash cards, and links to games you can purchase. I like the quick, 3 minute, 40 question quizzes with the answer sheet below. You can fold the paper and ask the student to take the quiz as 'filler' while you help other students in the class, then go back to review later. The bonus is that the student can check her own work while she waits.

Another site has, as the title suggests, Free Multiplications Worksheets. My favorite here is the blank multiplication table (one is left-handed), but there are many, many sheets with different arrangements of questions.


In case you have this option, there are sites with online games or worksheets where students are automatically corrected. Try the worksheets at 123 Aplusmath.