Understanding Multiplication

Multiplication is a concept the students in my class have been eager to learn.  In September, they proudly told me that they knew some of their multiplication facts and wondered when we were going to learn more.   Throughout the year, I taught a few games that modelled the concepts of multiplication.

Yesterday the class heard two great books below...

Next the students worked with one of their clock partners (pairs) and did a carousel brainstorm.   Each set of partners was asked to think about items that come in specific numbers (constants of count).   Some examples include: human eyes which come in twos, wheels on a tricycles come in threes, sides on a square come in fours, and so on.   The partners rotated around the classroom 12 times and were asked to add their ideas to t-shirts numbered 1 - 12.   This idea came from one of Kim Sutton's excellent resource books titled, All Aboard The Algebra Express.  This lesson is our pre-cursor to understanding that multiplication can be thought of as repeated addition or groups of equal numbered items.

Today we continued to explore the constants of counts but moved to T charts to examine these relationships.   I was pleased that some of the students instantly recognized patterns and used their knowledge of patterns to fill in the data.

Some students without being taught, determined the multiplier of "n" in the function and another child recognized that "n" = n + n   There mathematical thinking never ceases to amaze me!