Blog #6- Anchor Chart of Distributive Property

Grade Level: 3rd 

Standard: NY-3.OA.5


This standard states, 

Understand properties of multiplication and the relationship between multiplication and division: 5. Apply properties of operations as strategies to multiply and divide.

 For this post, I wanted to relate it to what I am observing while student teaching for third graders. They learned the commutative property a few days ago and now they're learning about distributive property of multiplication. At first, the method they were learning through confused me. I only recalled learning this property through parentheses and distributing the number outside of a parentheses to the two factors. But, this method is about breaking up a large multiplication equation or the arrays and trying to turn them into smaller facts since students know how to do those multiplication facts. 

In this method, students are required to draw their arrays according to the question. My question required me to draw 3 rows of 6 in each. Next, students are supposed to think how can they break apart a factor and I chose to break 3 into 2 and 1. This is because the sum of 2 and 1 tis 3. Then, they are supposed to break down the large array so I chose to draw a dotted line below row 1. This created an array of 1x6 and 2x6 which represents breaking 3 into 2 and 1. It's then important that students write out the multiplication equation and start completing the format of solving a distributive property equation. So, then I would write in each of the two parentheses my new numbers and each would be multiplied by 6 since the number in each row isn't changing. This visual strategy helps to differentiate which method goes after which. Lastly, students should find out the sum of the two multiplication facts and should see that the product is still the same. I saw a similar anchor chart online and used the worksheet the students completed in class to help me draw all this out.