What is a product?
What is a product?
The product of two numbers is the result you get when you multiply them together.
So 12 is the product of 3 and 4, 20 is the product of 4 and 5 and so on.
Children need to become familiar with this concept in Key Stage 2 as questions such as the following often come up in mental maths test and written tests:
What is the product of 10 and 3?
If children are not aware of the definition of this word, it is very easy for them to think the above question requires addition of 10 and 3 (13) instead of multiplication of 10 and 3 (30).
Multiplication vocabulary in KS2
In Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 children are expected to be familiar with a range of mathematical vocabulary.
Vocabulary related to multiplication includes:
- product
- times
- multiplied
- 'lots' of (often represented visually as arrays).
Children may be given puzzles or investigations which include vocabulary that they need to be confident with, for example:
Which two even numbers below twenty give a product of 108?
For this, children need to be aware of the meaning of the words 'even' and 'product'. Their next task is to think about how to work out the answer.
A good way to do this would be to list all the even numbers below twenty and then practise multiplying different pairs together. (It may be a good idea for them to carry this out in some kind of order, so that they make sure they do not multiply the same pairs twice!)
Answer: 18 and 6
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