3rd Graders Practice the Distributive Property of Multiplication

Math students in 3rd Grade were excited to learn a new strategy for simplifying the process of finding the area of a rectangle last week when they were introduced to the Distributive Property of Multiplication. To test this property, pairs of 3rd Graders constructed large rectangles, then partitioned them into smaller rectangles. Next, they used multiplication to find the area of these smaller rectangles and addition to find the total area of the original large rectangle. Finally, students wrote equations to model their application of the Distributive Property of Multiplication and presented their process and their findings to their classmates.