Distributive Property

This lesson, provided by the Contextualize to Learn project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has students work in groups to work through a set of discovery activities. These activities are intended to help students develop the distributive property of multiplication over addition using the manipulatives provided.

The expected total time for the lesson is 75 to 105 minutes. The following manipulatives are required: one inch tiles, four colors (or substitute with grid paper), colored pencils/pens, grid paper, and tape.