This project is for students to use independently of the teacher to develop an understanding of variety and strategy in the context of multiplication algorithms. During these activities, students will meet another powerful multiplication algorithm used by millions of people.
Number Framework domain and stage
Multiplication and division, stage 7 or stage 8, advanced multiplicative or advanced proportional.
Curriculum reference
Number, level 4
Numeracy Project book reference
This activity can be used to follow the teaching episodes based on Book 6, page 63 (paper power) and are for those students who are able to use the associated number properties.
Prior knowledge
Students should be able to:
- instantly recall their multiplication tables up to 10
- use a written algorithm to complete multi-digit multiplications.
Background
This project is valuable for students who are strongly algorithmic, and simply want to be told ‘how to get the answer’ as it is important for these students to develop a better understanding of mathematics, and how it works, if they are to be successful in the higher school. This is because in years 12 and 13, it becomes increasingly difficult for such students to memorise algorithms for all the possible variations to questions. Rather they need to learn to recognise pieces of mathematics in context, and experiment by applying appropriate mathematics, or be able to answer “what mathematics do I know that might work given what I know about the problem?” Even able students can find this change in approach extremely challenging if they have not learned to think and work in this way in earlier years.
A peer marking sheet has been provided for the finished posters. In such sheets it is important for student to learn to separate the visual appeal of the work (and the effort that has gone into this) from the quality of the mathematics. Usually this would mean a low weighting for presentation, but in this case as visual appearance has been emphasised in the task as an important element, 30% of the marks have been allocated for this. Note that some other marks are also easy to achieve, so it should be hard to get less than 50%, as well as being hard to get high marks.
Some downloaded material on each multiplication form may be provided for students. Good places to start are Wikipedia and Google.