![]() ![]() While having the right answer is important, it is more important for students to understand why. However, many students are not able to explain why they got their final answer. One reason many people are fans of the traditional method is that you can always get the right answer (if you are organized, of course). Most students could not tell you why they using those zeros in the first place.Īnd this brings me to the my second very important reason for teaching this method: number sense! 2. Forgetting to add one zero to the second line, two zeros to the third line, and so on and so forth is not only hard to remember, but confusing. With the area model of multiplication students step themselves up to first multiply and then add.Īlthough organizational-based errors can still occur, for the most part the area model of multiplication helps students stay more organized. This happens often because students are trying to multiply and organize at the same time. Numbers that are slightly unaligned can be added accidentally in the wrong column or sometimes even in 2 columns, making it hard to find where the error actually lies. The bigger organization culprit, however, is lining up the rows of products to add at the end.Īll it takes is one digit to be off and suddenly the addition becomes ultra confusing. Even when students remember to cross off numbers that they have carried, this still can get overwhelming and cause confusion. With the traditional method of multiplication, organization is where most students struggle.Īs students multiply each digit, they carry over many numbers. While there are many reasons why this method should be taught, I believe the two most important are organization and number sense. Why teach the area model of multiplication? It is a huge disservice to not teach students this method, or to tell them it’s a waste of time to learn. However, there are so many benefits to learning the area model of multiplication method. The traditional algorithm is important to learn and does have a time and place to be used. There were complaints that this method was clunky and that solving problems this way was not as quick as the traditional algorithm. Parents, and even some educators, took social media by storm to complain about how ridiculous the area model of multiplication is. The area model of multiplication has been a super controversial topic on social media.
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