This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: There are 6 tables in Mrs. Potter's art classroom. There are 4 students sitting at each table. Each student has a box of 10 colored pencils. (A) How ma...

Students will be reinforcing and demonstrating early multiplication skills using a game format.  This interactive activity supports the third grade standard of showing and representing mathematical problems involving mulitplication and division.  Student responses are recorded into a Microsoft Excel sheet that teachers can download to use as a formal assessment tool.

The purpose of this task is to support students' reasoning based on place value to multiply a single digit number by a multiple of 10. This reasoning builds on and supports knowledge described in 2.NBT.A.1, 3.OA.A.1, and 3.OA.B.5. If used in an instructional setting, students might benefit from having access to base-ten blocks. Students should also be encouraged to use a number line marked with tens. An empty number line is an excellent tool that helps students who are ready to develop a more abstract understanding of place value but are not yet ready for a purely symbolic solution approach.

Students decompose 2-digit numbers, model area representations using the distributive property and partial product arrays, and align paper-and-pencil calculations with the arrays. The lessons provide conceptual understanding of what occurs in a 2-digit multiplication problem. Partial product models serve as transitions to understanding the standard multiplication algorithm.