How many of your students come to you with a good understanding of multiplication? Research shows that you should develop student understanding PRIOR TO teaching students an algorithm.

GOAL

3X groups of 5 = 5 groups of 3

5 x 23 Concrete: Build with tiles, use place value blocks Pictorial: Draw a representation  Use this to show how to use the distributive property to solve this problem Number: What does this strategy look like in number Algorithm

Concrete: 5 x 23

Using place value blocks for: 5 x 23

5 X 105 X 10 5 x

Pictorial: 5 x 23 Area model: X X X3 15

Connected to Number:5 x 23 5 x 23 23= X5X5X

Partial Products

Traditional Algorithm H T O x seven times four is 28 ones which 2 0 can be regrouped as 2 tens and 8 ones seven times ten is 70, plus two more tens, is 9 tens or times 4 is 120 which can be regrouped as 0 ones, 2 tens and 1 hundred, etc…

Final Thoughts Even though a focus of learning about multiplication in grades 3-5 is on developing computational proficiency, students also begin to see the usefulness of multiplication as a problem-solving instrument in many other situations. As students learn to recognize various situations as multiplicative, they begin to form an idea of multiplication as a powerful mechanism for representation and reasoning. This solidly rooted and growing understanding of multiplication and division in grades 3-5 lays the foundation for further understanding of these operations in other number domains, such as fractions and decimals.