[FrogMom]

Here’s a good explanation of latice multiplication: http://www.coolmath4kids.com/times-tables/times-tables-lesson-lattice-multiplication-1.html

Seems like a hell of a lot of work.

[AnAmericanMother]

It's a gimmicky thing - it works pretty well for multiplying large numbers, but it's really just a fancy version of the old "carry the one" multiplication and adding up the different places.

Putting it on diagonals seems to me to make it harder to understand what a "ones", "tens" and "hundreds" place is.

[Califreak]

It looks like a lot more work, but my daughter claims it’s the only way she can really understand how to multiply. When I checked her work, she had 10 out of 12 answers wrong and had to do them over again, some more than once until she got it right.

She used to do okay with the old fashioned method. Now, I’m afraid she’ll never be able to do it again without getting confused.

I hate to think that must be the goal the “educators’ are shooting for.