Term starts this week. In most English schools that means staff back at the start of September and pupils a day or two later, after INSET — check your own calendar, academies set their own days.
The Multiplication Tables Check is not this week. Year 4 sit it in the two-week window beginning Monday 7 June 2027. Opening with a timed 25-question mock on day one just rattles children who have had six weeks off. Week one is a baseline and a habit. June is a year of short, regular practice away.
I teach a 15-minute look on the first proper day, then a 10-minute slot every day after that. No accounts, no app, nothing to install on the school iPads.
Day 1: a 15-minute baseline (not a test)
Put a blank 12×12 grid on every desk — the printable charts page has a blank 1–12 PDF alongside the completed one. Tell the class they have about ten minutes. They fill what they know. They leave gaps. That is the point.
While they work, you walk. You are not marking a score. You are sorting tables:
- Secure: 2s, 5s, 10s come out quickly and in any order
- Getting there: 3s and 4s, maybe 11s
- Not yet: 6, 7, 8, 9, 12 — the facts the MTC weights most heavily later in the year
The last five minutes: they check against the completed multiplication chart in a different colour. Wrong answers stay visible. That grid is your September grouping, not a grade for the book.
If a full 12×12 is too much for your Year 3s, use the blank 1–10 grid instead, or fold the sheet and give them one row at a time.
Days 2–5: the 10-minute slot
Same time every day. Before assembly, after lunch, last thing — pick one and keep it. Ten minutes is enough if nothing else in the lesson has to move.
A pattern that actually fits a noisy first week:
- One minute — the chart on the board, one table only. Chant it forwards, then pick facts out of order.
- Four minutes — one browser game for that table, on the IWB or on tablets. No logins. The builder on the teacher page gives you a quiz locked to the tables you choose: paste the iframe into your class site, or just open the link full-screen on the board.
- Five minutes — a 12-question sheet for that table, in order on day 2, mixed up by day 4. The worksheet generator builds a whole class set in one PDF, names on the sheets if you paste your class list, answer key at the back, A4 or Letter.
Do not mix 2 to 12 until the baseline says they can. A child still counting in 2s does not need 7×8 on Wednesday.
Three groups, three sheets, one click
In the generator, pick the tables, set “in order” or “mixed up”, and print up to 35 sheets with one shared key. Typical first-week split:
| Group | Practise this week | Questions | Order |
|---|---|---|---|
| Secure on 2/5/10 | 3 and 4 | 12 | In order, then mixed |
| Getting there | 2, 5 and 10 | 12 | Mixed |
| Not yet | 2 and 10 only | 12 | In order, facts up to 10 |
Black and white is fine — that is what the printer in the corridor does anyway.
Friday: colour by number, and it marks itself
First Friday is early-finishers chaos. Give them a back-to-school colour by number for the table they practised that week. The picture (apple, backpack, pencil cup, bus, sneaker) only comes out right if the facts are right, so you are not standing there with a red pen.
Free PDFs, one sheet per table from 2 to 12 plus a mixed sheet, Letter and A4, worksheet plus answer key:
The colour names sit under every swatch, so a black-and-white class set still works. Each sheet carries a small QR code that opens the same picture in the online colour-by-number generator if you would rather do it on tablets — that generator also prints a class set of up to 30 different sheets in one go.
Want a full 28-page pack for centres and cover lessons, not just the free one-pagers? That pack is Back to School Color by Number on our TPT store ($3), and it is also inside the MEGA Multiplication Bundle on this site ($12 for 247 pages across the year). One teacher licence; photocopy for your own class.
If you are teaching Grades 3–4 in the US
There is no MTC on your calendar, but the shape of the week is the same. Swap “Year 3 and 4” for “Grades 3 and 4”, set every PDF to Letter, and use your district’s fact-fluency check as the thing on the horizon rather than the June date itself. The baseline grid, the ten-minute slot and the Friday colour by number all work unchanged.
What not to do in week 1
- Do not run the full MTC simulator as a cold first task. Save it. When you do use it, it is 25 questions, six seconds each, free, no accounts, with a certificate at the end and results you can email home. That is a November or January check, once the 6–9 and 12 facts have had some teaching. The official window is the two weeks from 7 June 2027 (STA dates).
- Do not send home “learn all the tables by Friday.” Send one table, or one colour-by-number.
- Do not collect scores for a spreadsheet. You will get better information from the gaps on the blank grid.
A note you can send home
Copy, change the table, send:
We are spending ten minutes a day on times tables this month. Nothing to log in to. If you want something on paper, this colour-by-number for the __ times table prints on one page and has the answers on page two: https://timestablekids.com/back-to-school-multiplication-color-by-number/
Five minutes is enough. We are not preparing for a test this week. Year 4 will sit the Multiplication Tables Check next June.
After the first week
Keep the ten-minute slot. Move the secure group onto 6, 7, 8, 9 and 12 as soon as 3s and 4s hold, because those five tables carry most of the MTC. When you want a timed look under test conditions, use the simulator, then print a sheet of only the tables each child actually missed.
Once the first week is behind you, the next step is the autumn baseline: Year 4 MTC 2027 — a September baseline and a weekly plan to the check. It picks up in week two or three and runs a ten-minute-a-week plan through to the June window.
The classroom hub has the generators, the embeddable quiz, every table’s page, and the printables in one place.
Written for Year 3–4 teachers in England and Grades 3–4 in the US. Everything linked here is free and needs no account.
