Growth Point 2

Materials: One dice, Unifix or other items to be used as counters.

Activity: Student rolls the dice and make a ‘lot’ (group) of that number.

Related key ideas: Equal groups, composite units.

Variation: Get students into groups (e.g. 2, 3, 4). Write and draw the new number they have made using the language of ‘groups of’ and ‘lots of’.

Materials: 24 counters per student, set of flashcards numbered 6, 8, 9, 12, 16, 18, 20, and 24.

Activity: Teacher shows students one of the flashcards. Each student then uses that number of counters to model that number as a collection of equal groups (e.g. 12 could be represented as 6 × 2, 3 × 4 or 12 × 1; or as 6 lots of 2, 3 lots of 4 or 12 lots of 1).

Students then share and compare responses, and the teacher leads discussion with questions such as ‘Are there any other possibilities which we didn’t think of?’.

Related key ideas: Equal groups, composite units.

Variation: What do you notice about the number of possibilities there are with the larger numbers? What is similar and different about the groups you can make with different numbers?

Materials: A selection of different objects to be used as counters (e.g. buttons, Unifix, paper clips).

Activity: You are going to have five friends for a party. Teacher asks, ‘How many children are there altogether, including yourself?’. Use the different counters to represent different party foods. If there were:

• 12 cupcakes (Unifix cubes), how many would each person get?

• 24 jelly babies, how many would each person get?

• 6 dim sims, how many would each person get?

• 18 snakes, how many would each person get?

• 30 sour worms, how many would each person get?

Finally, if each person had two slices of pizza, how many pieces of pizza would be needed altogether?

Related key ideas: Equal groups, composite units.

Materials: Dice.

Activity: Pretend the whiteboard is a movie screen. Roll a giant dice and ask that many students to come forward and sit in the front row. Ask, ‘How many students are sitting in the front row of the movie cinema?’, ‘What would happen if I add another row? And another?’, ‘What do notice about the way the rows are lined up?’, ‘What do we call this?’ Introduce the notion of arrays and make a list of their features.

Related key ideas: Equal groups.

Materials: iPad/device for taking photos.

Activity: Take a walk around the school and take photos of things that are arranged into an array. Annotate the photos to show how they represent a multiplication number sentence (e.g. ‘3 lots of 3’).

Related key ideas: Equal groups.

Materials: Collections of a variety of materials (e.g. buttons, counters, fruit, toy cars, animals), take-away food containers with lids.

Activity: Explain to the students that they are working in a packing factory and their job is to pack the collections into smaller groups so they can be sold. For each of the collections, they must decide if they can pack the items equally into the containers without leftovers. Encourage students to draw their boxes and the items inside to show how they have divided the items equally.

Related key ideas: Equal groups, division with remainder.

Variation: Use a dice to determine how many boxes they have and then decide how many items they have to put in each box.

Materials: Bean bags, hoops, dice, Unifix, Unifix/counters.

Activity: Start by placing 12 bean bags in the centre and ask students, ‘How many hoops can I use so that my bean bags are divided equally?’ Try various combinations and ask students to record what they see each time, using pictures and words. Students can then try to do their own arrangement with 12 Unifix cubes or counters, by rolling a dice to determine how many groups. Students mark out the groups with hoops (if there are enough) or kinder squares. Ask students, ‘Which number of groups divide equally? What do you notice about these numbers? Will the same thing happen if you change the number of cubes?’

Related key ideas: Equal groups.

Variation: When students roll the dice, this number now represents the number of items in each group rather than the number of groups.

Materials: Triangle template, Unifix, numeral cards 1 to 20.

Activity: Students flip over a numeral card and collect that number of Unifix cubes. Students predict if that collection can be divided equally to make towers of the same height on the corners of the triangle (e.g. ‘If you flip over a 15, you could make 3 towers of 5 cubes’). You would make 3 towers because there are 3 corners on the triangle. Students repeat with a variety of cards and make a list of those quantities that make equal groups.

Related key ideas: Equal groups, division with a remainder, properties of multiplication and division.

Materials: The Doorbell Rang by Pat Hutchins, counters, paper plates, dice.

Activity: Read the story The Doorbell Rang to the students. When you arrive at the last page, pose the problem, ‘How many cookies are on the tray?’, ‘How many children did Ma have to share the cookies with?’, ‘How many cookies did they each get?’ Students then collect the quantity of counters that were on Ma’s tray to represent cookies (alternatively you could use real or paper cookies). Students roll the dice to determine how many children were at the door and collect that number of paper plates to share out the cookies. Encourage students to record their findings by drawing what they have made and writing a number sentence.

Related key ideas: Equal groups, division with a remainder, composite unit.

Variation: Pose the problem, ‘Ma shared her cookies evenly between the children and she was left with 2 spare cookies. How many children could she have shared them between?’.