Column Multiplication Worksheets
Long multiplication practice · Grades 3–4
Long multiplication (2 × 2, 3 × 2, 3 × 3 or 4 × 2 digits) with room for the partial products and their place-value shifts, printed on a notebook grid. Designed for students in grades 3 and 4 who already know their times tables and are learning the standard written algorithm.
Sheets are randomized, free to print, and carry no answer key on purpose – why Super Awesome Math works this way.
How to do it
Long multiplication splits the job into one easy multiplication per digit of the bottom number, then adds the partial products – each shifted one place further left than the last.
- Write the numbers one above the other with the digits lined up in their columns, ones under ones and tens under tens, and draw a line underneath.
- Multiply the whole top number by the ones digit of the bottom number, carrying where a column goes past 9. This is the first partial product.
- Move to the tens digit of the bottom number. Write a 0 in the ones column of the next line first – that 0 is what records that you are now multiplying by tens, not ones.
- Multiply the whole top number by that digit and write the result beside the 0. Repeat for a hundreds digit with two zeros, and so on.
- Add the partial products together in columns to get the answer. 364 × 27 gives 2548 and 7280, and those add to 9828.
Where it goes wrong
- Forgetting the shift. Leaving out the 0 on the second line is the mistake that turns 9828 into 3276, and it is by far the most common one.
- Carrying into the next multiplication. A carry from the ones row belongs to that row only; starting the tens row means starting its carries from nothing.
Frequently asked questions
- When is a child ready for long multiplication?
- Usually grade 3, and only once the times tables are recalled rather than worked out. Long multiplication is several small multiplications plus an addition, so shaky recall makes every step slower and harder to check.
- What are partial products?
- Multiplying 34 by 26 means multiplying 34 by 6 and then by 20, and adding the two results. Each of those results is a partial product, and each gets its own row on the sheet.
- Why is the second row shifted left?
- The second row multiplies by tens, not ones, so its result is ten times larger and starts one column further left. The shift is place value made visible, not a formatting rule to memorise.
Settings
- Preset: 2 × 2, 3 × 2, 3 × 3 or 4 × 2 digits
- Columns: number of problem columns per page
Example problems
- 34 × 26 = □
- 218 × 47 = □
- 472 × 386 = □
- 1305 × 62 = □
More Arithmetic
- Kindergarten Math – Counting, first sums and skip counting
- Add & Subtract – Addition & subtraction drills
- Column Addition & Subtraction – Vertical multi-digit addition and subtraction
- Division – Division facts, with or without remainders
- Multiplication & Division Tables – Every times table as a column of facts