Multiplication Strategies

Practicing Multiplication Strategies. Discuss Question 10 of the Multiplication Strategies pages in the Student Guide. Ask pairs of students to discuss Ana's solution and what they would tell Ana.

Revisit Question 7 by asking students to calculate how many tiles each student has using a strategy from the right-hand column of the Multiplication Strategies Menu, using mental math. Students should notice that Ming should have 28 fewer tiles than Maya because there are four fewer tiles for each of the seven rows.

Assign the Practicing Multiplication Strategies pages in the Student Activity Book for homework or use it as an assessment. Read through the directions with the students. Ask them to scan the two pages and identify problems they think they could solve using mental math. Ask them to put a star by those problems to remind themselves to try a mental math strategy when they get to those problems. Tell them to be prepared to show their mental math strategies with a partner or the class and to show all their paper-and-pencil procedures.

Remind students that some strategies may work better than others for different students and no strategy is best all the time. Different strategies work well for different kinds of problems.

Transfer observations from the Unit 4 Assessment Record to student's Unit 4 Individual Assessment Records.

After students have worked on the pages, discuss the strategies they chose and have volunteers explain a few of their mental math strategies.