Multiplication Grid Makeover

The teaching community on twitter has been a daily source of inspiration for me over the years. I follow a variety of educators and # but I particularly enjoy and use ideas from the maths teachers I follow. This image is courtesy of @the_chalkface, a high school maths teacher in the UK but that doesn't put me …

Factors & Multiples

Why is it that students always seem to get factor and multiple confused? In my search for an activity to reinforce these terms I came across a hundreds chart (as featured in the excellent TEDtalk by Dan Finkel). It is taken from the game Prime Climb made by the guys at math4love. The chart goes up …

Compensation strategy number talk

We've been using number talks a lot in the classroom, sometimes they are warm-ups for the lesson and sometimes they shape a whole lesson and more. This lesson started with what I thought would be a quick multiplication number talk. When I presented them with this multiplication one student tried to use the compensation strategy in the same …

Steps Inquiry

 

Multiplication prompt

Division prompt

Questions and comments: I think 42 x 14 is the same as 84 x 7 because if you split 84 you get 42 and if you split 14 you get 7. Why does it say that 42 x 14 = 84 when the answer is really 588? I think the answer to 42 x 14 …

Multiplication Inequalities

source: http://www.inquirymaths.com/home/number-prompts/21-x-534

Factorization

Check out this amazing animation from datapointed.net that popped up my twitter feed via @RichardsonLiza. The infinite animation shows a sequence of dancing dots that form factorization diagrams. I covered the top left corner when showing the animation to students as it reveals too much about what is happening. Whilst the students watched the animation they …