I was told about this *amazing* online tool today.  It can be used in SO many ways. Here is one:

There is a core groups of students who have been absolutely flying ahead of the others with multiplication. They are ready to go deeper and play around with double digit by double digit numbers. The last thing I want to do is try to teach them the traditional algorithm I was taught in school at this point in their learning. I’d like them to understand what is happening conceptually first.

So I brought up the dreambox learning teacher tool page today during our computer lab time. I pulled that group of 7 students over to take a look at the Fourth Grade Multiplication and Division section.  You are looking specifically for the tool titled Multiplication: Open Arrays – Students compose arrays, use partial products, and develop understanding of the distributive property to mentally multiply up to 3-digit by 3-digit numbers.

THIS IS AN AWESOME TOOL. My group of third graders went crazy over it. After I showed them a few examples (like below). They were so excited to be multiplying such huge numbers. Not to mention the fact that it helps solidify the concept of arrays and area.

This is a screenshot of the game. It totally walks them through the entire process.  Since they just recently learned how to multiply by multiples of 10, they were eating it up.

The best part? It’s FREE!

P.S. Just as an FYI, we had a lot of problems with googling it, we had to actually type in http://www.dreambox.com/teachertools.