Times Tables Worksheets and Charts

How to make it

1. Choose the sheetChart to fill in prints a 10 by 10 or 12 by 12 grid; One table, drill problems prints facts for a single table, chosen from 1 to 12.
2. Set the size and the gapsTable size sets the chart, or how far a drill goes: up to 10 or 12. On a chart, hide 0 to 80 percent of the products at random.
3. Print sheet and keyThe worksheet prints first and the answer key follows, with hidden products or drill answers filled in pink.

A complete chart, a partial one, or nearly empty

Set the hidden share to 0 and you get a clean reference chart: the numbers 1 to 10 or 1 to 12 across the top and down the side in shaded header squares, and every product in the grid. Children can keep it in a homework folder or glue it inside a notebook cover while the facts are new. On the larger grid the products climb as high as 144, so check that the print is still easy to read for your youngest learners.

Somewhere between 20 and 40 percent hidden is where practice starts. Enough products remain to act as clues, so a child who has forgotten 6 × 7 can reason from 6 × 6 next to it, which is exactly the thinking you want early on. At 60 to 80 percent the grid becomes a recall task with few landmarks. The highest setting is 80 percent, so a handful of products always remain, and those few give a stuck child somewhere to restart from.

Which squares go blank is random, and New variant reshuffles them. Two children sitting together can have the same chart with different gaps, which makes copying pointless.

One table at a time: drill sheets

Choose One table, drill problems under Sheet and pick the table under Practice the table of, from × 1 to × 12. Every problem pairs that number with a factor from 0 up to 10 or 12, following the Table size setting, so the 7s sheet runs from 0 × 7 to 12 × 7 on the larger size. Problems are set out vertically, four to a row, with the chosen table always sitting underneath, so a child's eye finds the 7 in the same place every time.

Twenty problems is the starting count, and How many under More options goes up to 40. A single table has only 11 or 13 different facts, so a longer sheet brings some back in a new order, which is the repetition a drill is for. The key prints each product in pink, the title reads Times Table of 7 and can be edited, and US and Canadian sheets (those that open on Letter) show CCSS 3.OA.C.7 in the footer. When several tables are secure, mixed facts in random order live on the multiplication worksheet generator.

Patterns worth pointing out

The diagonal from the top left corner is shaded: 1, 4, 9, 16, all the way to 100 or 144. These are the square numbers, and the chart is a mirror across that line. Show a child that 7 × 8 and 8 × 7 sit in matching squares on either side, and the number of facts to learn roughly halves.

Other patterns jump out once the grid is in front of you. Every product in the 2s row is even. The 5s alternate between ending in 5 and ending in 0. The 10s all end in 0. In the 9s row from 9 × 1 to 9 × 10, the tens digit goes up by one while the ones digit goes down by one, and the two digits add to 9. Ask children to find their own patterns with a colored pencil; spotting them makes the grid feel less like a list to memorize.

Skip counting is the bridge into tables. If a child cannot yet count by 3s, a hundreds chart with shaded multiples is a gentler place to see the pattern before the grid.

When each table is usually taught

Second graders in the US often skip count by 2s, 5s and 10s, which covers those rows of the chart. Third grade is when most schools expect fluent recall of products within 100, the goal of CCSS 3.OA.C.7, which the footer of US sheets shows; the 10 by 10 chart matches it. Fourth graders review all of it, and the 12 by 12 chart adds the 11s and 12s that some US classes still learn.

In England, Year 2 usually covers the 2, 5 and 10 tables, Year 3 adds 3, 4 and 8, and by the end of Year 4 children are expected to know every table up to 12 × 12, which is when the national multiplication tables check takes place. In Australia, facts up to 10 × 10 are typically expected to be secure around Year 4. So the 12 by 12 grid suits English classrooms well, while many Australian and American teachers stop at 10.

A routine from first chart to fluent recall

Week one: a complete chart, used as a reference while the class explores patterns. Week two: 20 percent hidden, done with a partner, talking through each gap. Weeks three and four: 40 percent, then 60, done alone. After that, children who fill a 60 percent chart correctly without counting along rows are ready for drill sheets on one table at a time, where problems appear without the grid to lean on.

Many families use the chart differently: a parent prints one with 40 percent blank on Sunday, the child does a row or two each morning at breakfast, and the answer sheet stays on the fridge for checking. Either way, keep sessions short and frequent rather than long and rare.

Common mix-ups and checking with the answer sheet

The facts most often confused sit in a small block of the chart: 6 × 7, 6 × 8, 7 × 8 and their mirrors, with 42, 48 and 56 swapping places. The 12s row brings mistakes with 12 × 7 and 12 × 8, and some children write a sum instead of a product, so 7 × 3 becomes 10. Another slip is reading the wrong row or column, which shows up as an answer that belongs one square away.

Lay the answer sheet next to the child's chart. Pink numbers are the ones that were hidden, so only those squares need checking. Circle each miss and look for a pattern: errors clustered around 7 and 8 call for targeted practice on those tables, while errors spread everywhere suggest the child is counting along rows rather than recalling. Turning the chart around also prepares children for division facts worksheets, since 56 ÷ 8 is just finding 56 in the 8s row.

How much to hide for a warm-up or a check

A warm-up of two or three minutes works with 20 percent hidden on a 10 by 10 grid: about twenty squares to fill, most of them easy. A practice sheet sits at 40 percent, the starting setting. For an end-of-term check, try 60 to 80 percent on the grid size your school uses, with the answer sheet held back until afterwards. Print a fresh variant for each attempt so children cannot learn the positions of the gaps instead of the facts.

For a class of 25, one practical approach is to print three variants at the same setting and hand them out by table group. Collect the charts, sort them by sheet number, and mark each pile against its own answer sheet. Squares left blank tell you as much as wrong ones: a child who fills every square in the 2s, 5s and 10s rows but leaves the 7s empty has shown you exactly which table to practice next week, without a separate test.

Common Core State Standards: © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.