3rd grade

My 3rd grade group is still working on a multiplication PBL project involving figuring out how to teach others multiplication fact families. Students are now making posters to demonstrate their games, songs, or activities. While students are working on ways to help others learn these facts, they are reviewing the facts to make sure they put down the correct information. I just overheard one student say that he enjoyed studying the facts this way. The two boys in this group are really involved in making up the game and the directions for playing. The branched out and are working on more than just one fact family on their gigantic board game. Yesterday, I worked with a girl in this group to review the facts she chose to review with a song. We worked in her planning notebook. She has now completed her song poster and is reading a multiplication book. Even though we are focusing on basic multiplication facts, one of the girls keeps asking me math problems like 11 x 44 and 5,000 x 20. Some students are really focused on being able to explain the rules for their games and activities. I just showed students some of the "tricks" I use to remember certain facts, like 7 x 8 and 8 x 9. All students are engaged in active learning.

At the end of class, I talked with the students about how they felt about what we worked on this week. Students said that it was fun and that it helped them review so that maybe they will do better on their multiplication tests today. We voted and decided to do more multiplication projects/problems next week to continue to learn and review multiplication facts.