Playing the product game

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Students learn how to play the Product Game, which helps them develop understanding of factors, multiples, and the relationships between them. Illuminations provides an activity sheet and game board overhead transparency for completing the lesson. The Product Game board consists of a list of factors and a grid of products, and students compete to get four squares in a row in various patterns. After students have played the game, the class discusses the strategies they discovered.

Students will:

• Review multiplication facts.
• Develop understanding of factors, multiples, and of the relationships between them.
• Understand that some products are the result of more than one factor pair.
• Develop strategies for winning the Product Game.

NCTM Standards and Expectations covered in this lesson include:

• Developing and using strategies to estimate the results of rational-number computations and judge the reasonableness of the results.
• Using factors, multiples, prime factorization, and relatively prime numbers to solve problems.
• Developing, analyzing, and explaining methods for solving problems involving proportions, such as scaling and finding equivalent ratios.

North Carolina Curriculum Alignment

Mathematics (2004)

Grade 6

• Goal 1: Number and Operations - The learner will understand and compute with rational numbers.
  • Objective 1.03: Compare and order rational numbers.
  • Objective 1.05: Develop fluency in the use of factors, multiples, exponential notation, and prime factorization.
  • Objective 1.07: Develop flexibility in solving problems by selecting strategies and using mental computation, estimation, calculators or computers, and paper and pencil.

Grade 7

• Goal 1: Number and Operations - The learner will understand and compute with rational numbers.
  • Objective 1.02: Develop fluency in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of rational numbers.
    • Analyze computational strategies.
    • Describe the effect of operations on size.
    • Estimate the results of computations.
    • Judge the reasonableness of solutions.
  • Objective 1.03: Develop flexibility in solving problems by selecting strategies and using mental computation, estimation, calculators or computers, and paper and pencil.