A drill sheet has one job: get a lot of facts in front of a student quickly, in an order that gives no help. That is the difference between a drill and a times table worksheet — there is no run of nines to fall into a rhythm on, so every question has to be answered on its own. Used for a few minutes a day rather than a long session, drills are how shaky facts become automatic, and how you find out which particular facts are the shaky ones.
Pages of mixed multiplication facts arranged in dense columns, with enough questions to keep a fast student working for several minutes. Some sheets restrict the facts to a chosen range for targeted practice; others draw from the full grid up to 12 x 12. Layouts are plain and uncluttered so nothing competes with the numbers. One sheet per US Letter page, black and white.
Short and frequent beats long and occasional. Five minutes a day is a common approach, with the aim of beating your own previous time rather than a class standard. A drill that stretches to twenty minutes usually stops being recall practice and becomes an endurance test.
Should drills be timed?
It depends on the student. Timing sharpens focus for some and produces genuine anxiety in others, and an anxious student recalls facts worse, not better. If you time them, timing against their own previous score rather than against classmates avoids most of the downside.
How do I find which facts a child is actually missing?
Mark a completed drill and note the specific questions missed rather than the total score. Most children have a handful of persistent gaps — often in the sixes, sevens and eights — and ten minutes on those five facts is worth more than another full page of mixed practice.
Are drills better than learning the tables in order?
They do different jobs. Learning in order builds the pattern and gets facts into memory; drills test whether they can be retrieved without the pattern to lean on. Most students need both, in that order.