My kids can : making math accessible to all learners, K–5

JAY: Divide them in half.

NINA: But they aren’t half white and black.

KAREN: Why are we dividing?

Julio thought that they needed to separate each of the 56 groups of 5 cars into
black cars and white cars.

GLORIA: We need to multiply.

KAREN: Why do you think that?

GLORIA: If you divided them, the number would be small and we have to

have 280 cars.

KAREN: So if I take my white cubes, then I have 56 groups of the white cubes.

NINA: And we have 2 in each group so we multiply 56 2. [The students

quickly compute the answer to 562.]

KAREN: So how will I find the black cubes?

TASHIA: Take the black cubes, you take the 3.

NINA: The 3 times the 56.

KAREN: How are we going to know that we have all the cars?

TASHIA: We add them all up!

SALLY: We add up the silver the black and the white and we get 315.

Karen realized that she could have connected Julio’s idea about dividing
the groups of five white cars and black cars to Nina’s computation of 56 2 and
56 3.

Planning Guided Math Groups

Figure 23–3.