Multiplying Our Math Skills

Third graders have been busy learning multiplication during math.   We started thinking about the concept by representing multiplication in different ways as skip-counting, repeated addition, and groups of objects.  This helped the concept become more intuitive as we talked about things that come naturally in groups.    We talked about how multiplication can also be represented as rows and columns or and how the commutative property works by flipping a rectangular arrays.

For the past few weeks, we've learned a lot of our facts by practicing, playing games, solving word problems and thinking of strategies for solving facts quickly and efficiently.  One student, Zach, showed how you could solve for multiplying 5 by any even number by dividing that number in half and adding a 0 to it.  (Try it!  28 x 5 = ?  Half of 28 is 14, so 28 x 5 = 140!)   Another student, Grace, extended this strategy for odd numbers by using the even number that comes before it and then adding 5 at the end.  We also talked about strategies for figuring out multiplying by 6's (adding one more group to 5), 9's (one less group than 10), and 8's (doubling 4).  As we continue to work on our multiplication skills, we're excited to find more new strategies for even larger numbers.