With the new common core, it is important that students have a variety of strategies to help them develop an understanding of math concepts. In this transition period, many students do not have previous conceptual development experience and struggle to think this way. I have found it necessary to give them a few strategies to get them started.
Background Knowledge: First, we develop an anchor chart with a word cluster of what we already know about multiplication. Then students shared what multiplication is. Repeated addition, which is adding a number said amount of times. Dots and circles is grouping numbers. Arrays is using area (length and width) to show the factors. Skip counting is used when the students can easily count by a number.
We referred to our chart that we created for Math Words
One strategy we looked at was the House or box which basically breaks numbers into their place value. 13 X 27, would be 10 + 3 times 20 + 7
