Times Tables Quiz: 30 Questions by Grade, With a Printable Answer Key

Before you start: most times tables quizzes test the wrong thing

Search for a multiplication quiz and you will find timed games. Almost all of them do the same thing: fire the whole grid at your child on a clock, from the first question, whatever their grade.

That is a fine way to practise once a child already knows the facts. It is a poor way to find out what your child should know yet, which is the question you actually have. A Grade 3 who "fails" a mixed twelve-times-table speed test has not failed anything. They have been tested on Grade 5 material.

There is a second thing those quizzes miss, and the Ontario curriculum is precise about it. Recall and understanding are separate expectations, taught in different years.

• Recall means the answer arrives without working it out. In Grade 3 that applies to the 2s, 5s and 10s only.
• Represent means the child can work it out and show why, with an array, a drawing or a grouping. In Grade 3 that applies to everything up to 10 × 10.

A Grade 3 who works out 7 × 8 by drawing seven rows of eight and counting is not failing. They are doing precisely what Grade 3 asks. Speed comes next year.

This quiz keeps those two apart, and the answer key tells you which is which.

What Ontario actually expects, grade by grade

Straight from the 2020 Ontario mathematics curriculum, Strand B2.

Two things stand out. The 11s and 12s are not a Grade 3 or Grade 4 requirement at all. And by Grade 6, Ontario has stopped asking about the tables directly and started asking whether a child can tell at a glance that 405 divides by 9.

Tier one: Grade 3

Recall for the first seven. Question 8 is different, and deliberately so.

• 1. 4 × 5
• 2. 7 × 2
• 3. 8 × 10
• 4. 6 × 5
• 5. 9 × 2
• 6. 5 × 5
• 7. 3 × 10
• 8. 7 × 8

On question 8. This is not a Grade 3 recall fact. Ask your child to work it out and show you how, with a drawing or by counting groups. Getting there slowly is a pass. Getting there instantly is a bonus.

Tier two: Grade 4

The year the whole grid is expected. Questions 14 and 16 test the mental-math expectation instead of recall.

• 9. 7 × 8
• 10. 6 × 7
• 11. 9 × 6
• 12. 8 × 8
• 13. 4 × 9
• 14. 12 × 100
• 15. 36 × 4
• 16. 7 × 1000

Yes, question 9 repeats question 8. That is the point of this page. The same fact is a work-it-out question in Grade 3 and a recall question in Grade 4. If your child is in Grade 4 and still needs to draw it, that is the gap worth naming.

Tier three: Grade 5

The grid widens to 12 × 12, and starts at zero. The last three are the two-digit by two-digit step up.

• 17. 12 × 12
• 18. 11 × 7
• 19. 12 × 8
• 20. 0 × 9
• 21. 23 × 14
• 22. 25 × 16
• 23. 45 × 12

Tier four: Grade 6

Facts are assumed by now. These test what Grade 6 actually asks for. Answer the first four yes or no.

• 24. Is 234 divisible by 3?
• 25. Is 1 128 divisible by 8?
• 26. Is 405 divisible by 9?
• 27. Is 3 742 divisible by 6?
• 28. 124 × 0.5
• 29. 316 × 0.4
• 30. 250 × 1.2

The answer key

Print this section. Every answer is worked, and the right-hand column tells you what the question was for.

Tier one: Grade 3

Tier two: Grade 4

Tier three: Grade 5

Tier four: Grade 6

What your child's wrong answers actually tell you

A score out of thirty is close to useless. The pattern of the misses is the whole diagnosis, and there are only four patterns worth knowing.

Slow but right. Every answer correct, most of them worked out rather than recalled. This is normal in Grade 3 and expected. In Grade 4 or later it says the facts have not moved into memory yet, and the fix is short daily practice on the specific tables that stalled rather than a general "do more maths".

Right on the 2s, 5s and 10s, wrong elsewhere. Exactly the Grade 3 profile. If your child is in Grade 3, they are on track. If they are in Grade 5, you have found the gap precisely, and it is a small one.

Correct facts, wrong bigger sums. Questions 1 to 13 fine, questions 15, 21, 22 and 23 wrong. The facts are there and the method is not. This is a place-value and procedure problem rather than a memory problem, and it is the one that most often gets misdiagnosed as "bad at times tables".

Right when calm, wrong under pressure. Correct at the table with you, wrong on a timed test at school. That is not a maths gap at all. Our piece on math anxiety in children covers what helps.

One more thing worth watching that is not about being right or wrong. Note how your child gets there. Counting on fingers, skip counting, deriving from a known fact such as 10 × 6 minus 6: these are all legitimate strategies, and the last one is a sign of genuine understanding rather than a shortcut. The Ontario curriculum asks for both the recall and the reasoning behind it.

Printing this

The answer key above is built as four short tables so it prints on one page from any browser. Use your browser's print command and, if the tables split awkwardly, set the scale to about 80 per cent.

Two ways parents use it. Print the key and keep it beside you while your child works from the screen. Or print the whole page, fold the key under, and let your child write on the questions.

There is no download to click and no email to hand over. It is a page you can print.

Where this sits in the rest of primary maths

Times tables are not an end in themselves. They are the thing that stops being a bottleneck later.

Division comes first: the curriculum pairs every multiplication-facts expectation with "and related division facts", in Grade 3, Grade 4 and Grade 5 alike. A child who knows 7 × 8 = 56 and cannot answer 56 ÷ 8 has only half the fact.

After that it is fractions, area, and eventually algebra, all of which assume the facts are automatic. This is why Grade 4 and Grade 5 matter more than they look: they are the last years where the tables themselves are the lesson.

If you want to see how these facts show up in a real Ontario assessment, the questions in our Grade 3 EQAO practice test and Grade 6 EQAO practice test put them in context alongside everything else those papers cover. Our maths tutoring page sets out the grades and topics Genie's teachers cover.

Where a certified teacher fits

Most times tables problems are not mysterious. A child is missing three or four specific facts, or has the facts and not the method. You can find that with the key above and fix a lot of it yourself.

Where it is worth bringing in a teacher is when the pattern of misses does not match the grade, or when you have practised for weeks and nothing is moving. That usually means the gap is further back than the tables, and finding it takes someone who knows the curriculum sequence.

Genie works only with Canadian Certified Teachers, licensed by a provincial governing body such as the Ontario College of Teachers. Certification is verified before a teacher ever sees a student profile: the certificate number and issuing body are checked against the provincial registry, alongside a live government-ID match. Genie calls this the Trust Engine. Matching is by course, pace and personality, and parents get a per-lesson record of what was covered and what the child understood.

That last part matters for something as granular as multiplication facts. "We did times tables" tells you nothing. "We found the 7s and the 8s were the gap, and here is what she could do by the end" tells you where you are.

We are not going to tell you what that produces on a report card. What a certified teacher brings is knowing which earlier step is causing today's problem, and being able to say so precisely.