Concrete CountersThe week or so before the lesson, I start to use the word distribute

regularly. Ill ask a student to please distribute these worksheets to everyone to start
familiarizing them with the term. Once the lesson begins, I remind students of the area model
and how to make arrays. I start with a simple array such as 36. After students have created
the array, then I ask them to brainstorm all the ways that we can break up the six. I model an
example: 1+5, 2+4, 3+3, 4+2, 5+1 (which lends itself to reminding students about the
commutative property). Then we pick one and I have the students use my really fancy mat
and these yellow-red counters. I have students choose one of the sets we created (such as
1+5) and choose the first number (such as the one) to model in red and the other number
(such as the five) to model in yellow but the entire thing still equals six. We practiced this
several times and even practiced filling in the prefilled template. (see the picture below for an
example).

After students have mastered the counters, I then hand them some scissors and some graph
paper! I provide students with some multiplication problems similar to above to still keep it
simple. Once they have all this mastered, then we will worry about the larger numbers. Im
more worried about the concept and understanding the meaning. I have students then take it,
break it up, and cut it into two parts. They then glue it into two different boxes and label each
very similar to the concrete method above.

Since the distributive property is such a difficult concept, I like to move s-l-o-w-l-y before I
move into the abstract. So I give them the next task of pretending they are farmers! Students
love this activity because they get to draw and color plots of their favorite vegetables while
drawing all the possible models of the distributive property to their multiplication
expression. I like to use this as a quick assessment to evaluate if my students understand the
distributive property (and the commutative property). As a bonus I can differentiate the
multiplication expression!
Once students have mastered this, then its time to move into the abstract and practice,
practice, practice.If you liked these activities you can find them all in my Area and Perimeter
Math Workshop Unit complete with 14 other hands-on lessons and much more! No matter
how you choose to teach the distributive property, remind yourself that your students will get
it- it just takes time and lots of concrete modeling and practice.