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MathBait™ Mastering Multiplication Part 7: Primes and Factoring

We've had an outstanding time designing and developing MathBait™ Multiplication to help your students build a lasting fluency and solid foundation! While this is the final unit in our series, don't forget, MathBait™ offers hundreds of games, missions, lessons and activities through our digital program, The Kryptografima.


MathBait™ presents The Kryptografima

The journey thus far has taken us from skip counting to dual processing to increasing fluency. Transitioning to multi-digit multiplication, we explored the many methods for introducing and helping students understand how to find larger products - including our own MathBait™ way! Parts 5 and 6 of our program focused on Napier's Bones, an outstanding tool for helping students build a strong conceptual understanding of multiplication and place value. This totaled 65 games and activities to help your students soar! Our final unit offers 16 activities and 8 new and exciting digital games to explore.


In Part 7, we shift our focus to help students better understand what we call "number traits". In other words, how can we build a number? What is any given number made of and how can this help us with multiplication? In fact, the activities in this unit will do far more than continue to build fluency in multiplication - they are promoting a familiarity and flexible view of numbers which will benefit students in division, working with fractions, finding square roots, as well as construct a foundation for algebra. Without further ado, let's jump into Unit 7!


Prerequisites

We recommend students have completed MathBait™ Multiplication parts 1-3 prior to beginning Unit 7. Students should feel comfortable with most products on the multiplication table (up to 10×10). Students need no prior understanding of division and division will not be introduced as a method of factoring.


Goal

In MathBait™ Multiplication Part 7, students will explore how to "build" a Natural number, how to break down a number, and how to use this understanding to improve multiplication fluency, as well as to find tricky products. You can think of Unit 7 like looking under the hood of a car. We might understand how to drive the car, but do we really know all the ins and outs of how a vehicle functions? Understanding the building blocks of numbers will not only skyrocket student multiplication fluency, but also provide them with strong tools vital for algebra.


It is highly recommended that students play the games provided here multiple times over a few weeks. Spiraling back to earlier games will help continue to grow fluency and to provide students with multiple methods of accessing their multiplication facts through retrieval.


Select a lesson to view details. Click on the arrow to expand. We recommend students play in the order provided for graduated levels of fluency. Bookmark this page to easily return for spiral review or a fun change of pace.


Why is factoring important?

Block Target

Factor It!

The Taxman

Centipede

You Can Do That?!

The Sieve

Prime Factor It!

Conclusion

MathBait™ Multiplication has been a blast to create. We have experienced the joy on students' faces when a new game is introduced or a familiar game is replayed. We have watched students grow their multiplication skills drastically and even seen very young students build amazing fact fluency through fun and engaging activities. Next up we are releasing our MathBait™ Multiplication Database. An amazing site dedicated to making each activity easy to access, find, and share. If you have been playing along, please do share this labor of love with your colleagues, friends, and family so more students can master math through joy.


In our final unit, we focused on factorization. Factorization is a powerful tool. Understanding what a number is made of will help students not only with multiplication and fact fluency, but with many mathematical topics to come including fractions, GCF, LCM, and continuing all the way into algebra and working with quadratic equations. Developing this type of number sense early and fostering it throughout your students' mathematical journey will help build a solid foundation of understanding (not memorization!) as well as a love of numbers, as when students "get it", have those "aha" moments, and enjoy the process they are nourishing an interest in problem-solving, a confidence with manipulating values, and strengthening brain connections to last a lifetime.


Finally, we encourage you to continue to play! These games make for great warm up activities, review days, stations, and so much more. Many games allow for challenges well into middle and high school. Remember, what we learn with joy, we never forget so keep playing, keep laughing, keep learning through fun and engaging tasks and never encourage memorization - foster understanding and your students will go far!



Cover of Marco the Great and the History of Numberville

The fun doesn't stop here!


For even more fun learning, make sure to check out our debut novel, Marco the Great and the History of Numberville.


For hundreds of games, missions, and loads of fun learning math, sign up for The Kryptografima by MathBait™ below.













NOTE: The re-posting of materials (in part or whole) from this site is a copyright violation! We encourage you to use these activities with your students. You can not take any part of these activities and post them as your own or crediting MathBait™ without written permission. This includes making derivatives for Teacher Pay Teacher or other websites. The material here is not considered "fair use". Thank you for respecting the author's rights.

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Thank you for visiting MathBait™! We would like to remind our visitors that we encourage the use of this material when working with students. However, our publications are not considered fair right. All the material on this website is copyrighted and cannot be copied or re-posted for commercial or non-commercial purposes without our permission. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

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