Which multiplication strategies do we know?

Today, we checked into different multiplication strategies we know and prefer to use.  I posed the following question and the children had 5 to 10 mins to jot down as many different strategies as they could.  They didn't have to be the most effective or fastest strategies. 

We then shared and discussed strategies we knew:

One student (below) creatively came up with his own strategy that really got us thinking!

Some of us started experimenting creatively with different strategies- some were successful and some not.  But, we celebrated those that didn't work and together tried to solve them so they could work like below:

We then discussed which of these strategies we felt were the most useful in understanding what we are doing with the numbers, which we felt were the best for speed and which we felt were more 'error-proof' than others when using them. 

This is what is so great about open-ended and inquiry-based maths - kids are given the freedom to experiment, explore, journey down 'wrong paths' and be creative with maths thinking!