Do not work it out exactly. Slide the marker to where you think the answer lands, then lock it in.
This engine’s own main skill is Estimation. It practises multiply whole numbers or decimals alongside it, and covers most of it rather than all.
Estimating is a skill in its own right, and in the 11+ it is your safety net: it tells you instantly whether an answer you have calculated is believable. The trick is to round each number to the nearest ten (or hundred) FIRST, multiply the easy numbers, then nudge. 49 rounds up to 50 and 21 rounds down to 20, so . The real answer is 1029, and you got within a whisker of it without doing any long multiplication. Notice the two roundings pulled in opposite directions, which is why the estimate lands so close.
What to say if they get stuck
Round both numbers to something friendly before you slide.
49 is nearly 50, and 21 is nearly 20. Those two are much easier to multiply.
, so the marker belongs just above the halfway mark of this line.
Where multiply whole numbers or decimals sits in the 11+
The 11+ does not test these skills in isolation, and practising one in the wrong order wastes the practice. These are the skills the curriculum map connects this one to.
A multi-step context may compose a multiplication step.
How multiply whole numbers or decimals differs from the skills beside it
The same exercise practises one other skill, and telling them apart is often the difficulty rather than the exercise itself. On this page the skill is: calculate one multiplication using place-value reasoning or a written method, and it stops where excludes selecting multiplication from context.
Questions parents ask about multiply whole numbers or decimals
Answered from what the skill map records about this skill, not from a template. Every answer here is on the page, and the same questions are the page's FAQ structured data.
Calculate one multiplication using place-value reasoning or a written method. It is one of 55 named maths skills in the 11+, in the number strand, and this page carries 1 interactive exercise that practises it.
Getting the digits right is only half of it: the decimal point has to land in the right column too. The wrong answers on this skill are built out of that, not out of random numbers, so it is worth naming out loud before your child meets it under time pressure.
Point at the next move rather than explaining the whole rule. Read what A is worth off the line first, then work out 8 lots of it, one column at a time from the right.
The skill map draws the line here: Excludes selecting multiplication from context. A question past that line is testing a different named maths skill, which is worth knowing before you spend a week practising the wrong one.
The skill map connects it to solve a multi-step problem. A multi-step context may compose a multiplication step. That skill has its own page here.
Use Roughly Right, embedded on this page. It is the exercise the skill map attaches to multiply whole numbers or decimals, it runs in the browser with no account to make, nothing is scored, and nothing a child does here is recorded or sent anywhere. It also has its own link, so you can send it to a child without sending them anywhere else first.
Knowing which maths topic to practise is most of the work
A free diagnostic covers arithmetic, fractions, geometry, measure and data handling, and comes back with the topics to spend the next few weeks on.
