Planning tool

Students:

• recall addition facts
• arrange a collection into equal groups
• use increasingly sophisticated skip counting and other multiplicative strategies to find the total number represented in an array
• represent multiplication as repeated addition
• link multiplication to groups of a collection.

Some students may:

• be able to say the answer to a mathematical equation such as 5 x 4 = 20, but not be able to explain what it means or represent the equation. Most difficulties occur when students learn procedures and rules by rote and/or by using abstract symbols without understanding their meaning. To overcome this, give students opportunities to use physical or representative models such as arrays to help them recognise the structure of the problem and promote the use of mathematical language such as ‘groups of’ or ‘shared between’.

For further information refer to Emphasise the usefulness of multiplication.

The Learning from home activities are designed to be used flexibly by teachers, parents and carers, as well as the students themselves. They can be used in a number of ways including to consolidate and extend learning done at school or for home schooling.

Learning intention

• We are learning to arrange a collection into an array to make it easier to count.
• We are learning to skip count by twos, fives and tens.

Why are we learning about this?

• We build number sense when we learn to count the same number of items in different ways.

What to do

1. Make a pile of 20 buttons. Find some different ways to organise the collection to make it easy to count, for example, try putting them in pairs.
2. Draw some of the different ways you arranged your collection. Can you write a number sentence to go with each drawing?

Success criteria

I can:

• rearrange a collection to make it easy to count.