Third graders at Holladay Elementary have been learning about ancient Egypt and China in History (SOL3.2) and multiplication in Math (SOL3.4), so today students in Ms. Pumphrey’s class created multiplication problems about the inventions and contributions of these great civilizations. We began with a blank Google slideshow and chose a theme. Then they decided if they wanted to solve a problem about China or Egypt and included that in the title slide. On the next slide, we started building our multiplication problem. One concept that is often difficult for third graders to understand is that multiplication is really just multiple groups that are equal. To help them grasp this idea, I instructed them to make one group of objects from Egypt or China with a story explaining the grouping. For example, one family has three kites, or one piece of paper is made from seven papyrus plants, or one silk cloth is produced by ten silkworms. They typed a sentence and illustrated the group. Some students used a Google image search to find pictures, while others drew their own pictures using Kleki. On the next slide, the students made multiple groups by copying and pasting the one group. Then they asked the multiplication question, like, “How many kites do four families have?” or “How many silkworms would make five cloths?” On the final slide, students recorded the answer (you may want to leave the answer off, and let classmates solve each others’ problems). They shared their slideshows on Schoology, but you can see them all here.
