Week Eighteen – Factors and Multiples

- We’ve touched on this already, but we’re going to do a full week dedicated to it
Day one - Revisit the tax person problem
Goal
- Refamiliarize students with concepts such as prime and composite numbers
Subordinated tasks
- Operations practice
Delivery
- Start whole group, then have students move into random groups on vertical surfaces
- Remind kids of the problem and see if anyone remembers how to defeat the tax person.
o If they don’t, have them play through in groups until someone gets it
o If they do, go through definitions of prime numbers and composite numbers, then
have them play through a few rounds with bigger numbers like 35 or 48
- After a few rounds of tax person, have kids return to their desks and show the prime
visualization pictures from week three (plants, circles, etc.).
- When looking at the plant picture, have students look at the number 36 and how the
flowers are the numbers, 2, 2, 3, 3 – ask students if they can figure out why those
numbers are in the flowers (prime factorization).
- Take down the picture and ask them about the number 24. Which flowers did 24 have?
See if they can figure it out on their own.
o Introduce factor trees as a way to organize that information.
- Practice making factor trees with different numbers.
Day two – Multiplying Menace book
Goal
- Having students work with multiples
Subordinated tasks
- Operations practice
- Constructing and deconstructing numbers
Delivery
- Read the story Multiplying Menace
o You don’t have to read the whole thing, just get kids to understand the concept of
the multiplying stick in the story.
o Present students with problems like, there are 3 donuts on the table, I need to have
21, how do I use the stick?
 Donuts times seven
  Talk about why 21 worked (because it’s a multiple of 3)
o Do some more questions like this, that you know will work.
o Present a question like this, “what if there are 5 donuts on the table, but I need 24
donuts?”
 Ex: Donuts times 6, donuts divided by 5, donuts times 6  have students
break this down and figure out why it works
o Give some more questions like this, and then have students create some problems
of their own to give to other groups
Day three – factor tree practice
Goal
- Students practice factoring numbers down to primes
Subordinated tasks
- Operations practice
Delivery
- Random partners with whiteboards
- Students are going to try to break three-digit numbers into their prime factors.
- Give a three digit number and see if kids can start to break it down
o Highlight strategies like dividing out 2s for even numbers, or fives from numbers
that end with 0 and 5
- Let students work, then circulate and give new three digit numbers. They could be prime
or composite, let the kids figure it out
- Encourage discussion and talking through questions – no silent groups!

Day 4 – window problem

Goal
- Multiplication practice
I usually present this to students by drawing the grid on the board, then having a student draw a
3x3 box around 9 numbers. I do the math and arrive at 20. Then I get another student to move the
box and I get 20 again.
Next I invite students to figure out if it’s always true, then to start changing the rules and make
conjectures.
- Change the size of the box
- Change the size of the grid
- What if we write the numbers a different way (snaking side to side)
If a class gets into this, they can take it and run with it. I’ve had a gr 6/7 class from a historically
low socio-economic school fill entire whiteboards with conjectures about rules for this problem.
So push them to get into this question, it is worth it!