Arranging Chairs: Multiplication Arrays

Today we worked on multiplication for about an 1 1/2 hours, and the children loved it! They were pumped and everyone participated with enthusiasm! This kinda of reaction to a lesson, makes any teacher want to dance and sing!!!! Today I asked the children to pretend to arrange 12 chairs for a class play in the gym. Each row had to have the same number of chairs in it, and you had to use all 12 chairs. I made sure I pointed out that there was more than 1 possible way to arrange the chairs, and some ways might seem ridiculous. It was great to see the concentration on their faces! They worked and worked and worked!

After we figured out how to arrange 12 chairs. The boys and girls had to figure out all the different ways we could arrange 18 chairs.

The boys and girls were very eager to share their answers with the rest of the class. I could not believe how that got into these problems.

After we discovered the different ways to arrange the chairs, we wrote multiplication sentences for each array. Then, we figured out the factors of 12 and 18.

NOTE: Tonight's homework is to arrange 24 chairs.