7 Times Table Worksheets

How do you learn the 7 times table?

Say it first: 7, 14, 21, 28, on up to 84, out loud, until the chain runs without a pause. Then break the chain on purpose. Answer the facts out of order, then mixed in with other tables, then against a clock. A child who can only chant it does not know it yet.

Start with the week

Every other table needs a story invented for it. This one already has one: a week has 7 days. Two weeks is 14 days, three weeks is 21, and a school half term of six weeks is 42 days. When a fact will not stick, ask how many days that many weeks is, and the answer usually arrives before the multiplication does.

Which sheet should I print first?

Print the chart, then the in-order sheet, and stop there for the first day. The chart is the reference and the ladder is the practice, and between them they cover the whole table without asking anything the child has not just read.

On day two print a mixed-up sheet. The gap between how fast the in-order sheet came back and how fast the mixed-up one does is the real measure of what has been learned, and it is usually humbling. Stay on the mixed-up sheets until they are quick.

Only then move to the missing-number sheets, where 7 x ? = 63 is the question. That is division wearing a different hat, and it is worth meeting before anyone calls it division. The mixed-tables sheets come after that, because a page of pure 7s is easy in a way a test is not: the child stops reading the first number.

The timed tests are last. Speed is a result, not a method, and giving a stopwatch to a child who is still counting on their fingers teaches them that they are slow rather than teaching them the table.

The three that give trouble

Almost every child gets stuck on the same three: 7 x 6, 7 x 7 and 7 x 8. They sit in the middle where there is no easy anchor, and their answers, 42, 49 and 56, look alike.

Anchor them to the ends instead of the middle. 7 x 5 is half of 7 x 10, so it is half of 70. From 35, one more 7 gives 42. From 70, one 7 back gives 63, and one more 7 on gives 77. Working out from 7 x 5 and 7 x 10 beats grinding through the middle, and it is how most adults still do it.

Every answer key is on page two

Every worksheet in this set that asks a question is a two page PDF: the sheet, then the same page again with the answers printed in green. Nothing has to be worked out to mark it, and a child can check their own page, which is worth more than a tick from an adult.

The three reference sheets, the chart, the desk strips and the tracing page, have no key, because the answers are already printed on them. The flashcards use their second page for the card backs, mirrored so that a double sided print puts every answer behind its own fact.

All 80 sheets in six groups

The page is split into six groups, and they are meant to be worked through roughly in that order. The table written out in order, then out of order, then backwards as missing numbers and divisions, then mixed with the other tables, then the pictures for anyone who is stuck, and the timed tests at the end.

Everything prints on US Letter and A4 from the same PDF, in black and white, with no sign-up and no watermark. Print one, print all 80, use them in a classroom or at a kitchen table.

More multiplication practice

When the 7s are solid, the rest of the tables are in multiplication worksheets, and the whole grid at once is on the multiplication chart. There is a printable poster for every table from 1 to 12 in the times table charts set. Going the other way, division worksheets and skip counting worksheets both lean on exactly the facts this page drills.