Multiplication Families

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Home : 2002 : April : 7

Multiplication Families
By Teri

I started out getting the kids to think of mult. as a way of grouping- i.e. I would choose 3 children to come to the front of the class, I would ask the class, "How many students are in front of the class?" They would answer
3. "How many ears does each person have?" They would say 2. I would write on the board 2+2+2. "How many ears are there all together?" 6 "3 people each have 2 ears - that means 3x2=6" I would then pick another student to come up. "How many students do we have?" 4 "How many eyes does each person have?" 2 "How many eyes are there all together?" 8 "So 4 people each have 2 eyes -

that's 2+2+2+2=8 That means that their are 4 groups of 2. Multiplication is putting numbers in groups!" They start early practicing counting by 2's, 3's, 5's and then 4's. This has worked great in my class!! I also start division RIGHT away- teaching that division is just the opposite of mult. just like subtraction is the opposite of addition.
Hope this helps!