How many ways?

A great activity to do in the 20 minute slot is 'different ways'.

We were looking at the 4x table and I asked children for a fact they found difficult. They chose 4 x 7 and these are six ways they came up with the solve it. It generated fantastic discussion.

It was great to hear the children say things like "We can partition the 7! We could split it into 5+2 and then do 4x5 + 4x2" and also "we could make a bar model split into 4, with 7,7,7,7" and then another child "we could make a bar model split into 7 with 4,4,4,4,4,4,4!"

When the children came up with doing 4x3 + 4x4 I talked about how 4x4 was a square number and asked why. By drawing the array the children could clearly see how it made a square.

A Rekenrek can be used effectively to support this idea:

Below is some work one of my pupils completed at home following this lesson!