Students build their multiplicative reasoning skills through the context of tiles arranged in a courtyard. The tiling array is made up of tiles of different sizes, so students’ understanding of the array is extended to work with partially abstracted arrays.
This sequence is for students who:
- are familiar with arrays and using them to solve multiplication problems.
- understand that arrays are made up of coordinated rows and columns.
Lesson 1: The Tiler
This task explores arrays through the context of tiling a courtyard. Students are given the total cost of tiling a courtyard and use this to calculate the price for individual tiles. They then explore the cost of different tiling designs to determine if one is cheaper than another.
Last updated June 15 2020.