Can someone enlighten me on the meaning of a yr3 maths question?

[MrsFogi]

One question is:
What is the sixth multiple of (a) 2 (b) 5?
and the next is:
3, 8, 15, 20, 24. What is the third multiple of the largest number?

What on earth are these questions asking for?

i am guessingultiplication??? ie 12, 30 & 72?

multiplication i mean

A) 14 b) 35

I would have thought? But I'm doubting myself now...

a) 12 because the multiples of 2 are 2,4,6,8,10,12 and 12 is the sixth of those multiples.
b) 30 because the multiples of 5 are 5,10,15,20,25,30 and 30 is the sixth of those multiples.
I think the next question is 24 because it is the third multiple of 8, which is larger than 5 (15 is the third multiple of 5)

with that logic dragon, I would have said last answer was 24 x 3 = 72?

Agreed steppemum. 3rd multiple of largest number: 24 is largest number, 3rd multiple is 3 x 24 = 72.

I would suggest the whole point of these questions is the understanding of the vocabulary 'multiple' which is extremely important.

The sixth multiple of straightforward - 12 and 30.

The second question though, may be a bit more confusing. If you take it at face value it is asking for the third multiple of 24, which is 72. The fact that 24 is the third multiple of 8 is, I think, a red herring.

The sixth multiple is straightforward. Bloody predictive text!

Ah I wasn't counting the original number as a multiple, but of course it is.

So forgive me here, I have clearly been left behind and dd has only got to yr3! Is my understanding correct - when the question says the xth multiple of something all they mean is x times something? So, the fourth multiple of 2 is 8?

The second question is very badly worded, presumably it is made up by the teacher as I have never seen a question like that on a year 3 test paper.

12, 30 and 72 all fairly straightforward if the children have been focusing on multiples in class.
Is your child finding it difficult?

MrsFogi, your understanding is correct. I would imagine that they are working towards finding 'lowest common multiples' (LCM) where you get given 2 numbers e.g. 3 and 4 and get told to find the LCM.
At this point it is useful to write out all the multiples
3,6,9,12,15
4,8,12,16
So you can see the smallest one which is the same, in this case 12, (3*4) but sometimes it won't just be the 2 numbers multiplied together.