Written methods arrive this year, alongside three new times tables. Here's where things commonly go wrong.
25 August 2026 · 5 min read
Year 3 asks children to do two hard things at once: learn three new times tables (3, 4 and 8), and start using a formal written method for multiplying two-digit numbers by a single digit. Doing both at the same time is where most of the year's difficulties come from.
With six times tables now in play (2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10), it's common for a child to confidently answer a question using the wrong table entirely — working out 4 × 6 by accident when the question was 3 × 6, especially under time pressure. This usually isn't a knowledge gap so much as a mid-question mix-up, and it tends to reduce naturally as the newer facts become more automatic and less effortful to retrieve.
The formal method for something like 34 × 3 involves multiplying the ones (4 × 3 = 12), writing down the 2 and carrying the 1, then multiplying the tens (3 × 3 = 9) and adding the carried 1. Children sometimes forget to add the carried digit, or add it in the wrong place, which produces an answer that's close but wrong — a small procedural slip rather than a sign the times table facts themselves are shaky.
Year 3 introduces estimating before calculating, but it's a habit that takes time to stick. Take 34 × 3, which should come to 102: a child who forgets to add the carried digit in the tens column can land on 92 instead — close enough to look plausible, but still wrong. Without the habit of a rough check first (34 × 3 should be a little over 30 × 3 = 90, so somewhere in the low hundreds), that kind of slip is easy to miss and write down as final.
Children are taught that division undoes multiplication, which is true and useful — but some take it to mean division always produces a smaller, "neater" number, which causes confusion the first time a division doesn't divide evenly, or when working with a division fact that isn't an exact times-table reversal.
If a specific times table is clearly the weak link, it's worth isolating and practising that one directly rather than mixing it constantly with facts already secure — see Year 3 times tables: how to learn them effectively for more on that. If the written method itself is the issue, working through a couple of examples very slowly, narrating each step out loud ("4 times 3 is 12, write the 2, carry the 1…"), tends to surface exactly where the process breaks down.
Grasp Maths tracks times-table recall and written-method accuracy as separate skills, so a slip in the carrying step of a written method doesn't get mistaken for a gap in the underlying times table fact, or vice versa.
Looking for printable practice too? See our Year 3 maths worksheets, or read the full Year 3 maths overview.
Try a free Grasp Maths practice session, matched to the Year 3 curriculum.