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Skills Covered

  • Describe a picture as groups of
  • Connect equal groups to a multiplication fact
  • Write a multiplication fact from a picture
  • Draw equal groups to match a fact
  • Find a missing factor
  • Explain and check equal-groups reasoning

How to Use This Worksheet

A ten-page set that builds multiplication from the ground up. Three teaching pages each open with a worked Learn It example, three practice pages give clean repetition, and the last three ask students to build groups from facts, reason about mistakes and missing factors, and finish with a quick check. The pictures rotate between cookies on plates, crayons in boxes, and muffins in tins, so students learn the idea rather than one picture. The last page is an Equal Groups Helper: rows of one to six empty boxes a student can mark, erase, and reuse for any problem in the set.

In the Classroom

Use the pages in order across a week. Teach with page 1, 3, or 5 under the document camera, then hand out the matching practice page. Page 8 works well in pairs as a talk-it-through task, and page 9 makes a five-minute exit ticket. Slip page 10 into a sheet protector so students can work problems with a dry-erase marker or counters.

At Home

One page a day is plenty. Have your child say each picture out loud before writing anything: three plates, four cookies on each plate, three groups of four. Once the words come easily, the fact comes easily.

Tips for Success

  • Keep the order: picture first, then the groups-of sentence, then the fact
  • Ask "how many groups?" before "how many in each?" every single time
  • On page 7, any picture is fine as long as the groups are equal
  • Use page 9 to decide who needs another pass through pages 3 and 4

Common Core Standards Alignment

This worksheet supports the following Common Core State Standards for Mathematics:

  • 3.OA.A.1 - Interpret products of whole numbers, e.g., interpret 5 x 7 as the total number of objects in 5 groups of 7 objects each
  • 3.OA.A.3 - Use multiplication within 100 to solve word problems in situations involving equal groups
  • 3.OA.A.4 - Determine the unknown whole number in a multiplication equation relating three whole numbers

Multiplication as Equal Groups

2nd - 3rd 9 worksheets + helper

A free 10-page printable set that teaches multiplication as equal groups for 2nd and 3rd grade. Students describe pictures as 3 groups of 4, connect them to 3 x 4 = 12, write facts from pictures, draw and match groups, then finish with reasoning problems and a quick check. Includes a reusable Equal Groups Helper page. Aligned to CCSS 3.OA.A.1.

What’s Included

  • 3 teaching pages, each with a worked Learn It example and a challenge
  • 3 practice pages with six pictures each
  • Build & Match, Think About Equal Groups, and Quick Check pages
  • Three picture types: cookies on plates, crayons in boxes, muffins in tins
  • Equal Groups Helper: a reusable page of empty boxes for working any problem
  • Name and date lines on every page, print-friendly layout