Area Model Multiply Studio

About Area Model Multiply Studio

Area Model Multiply Studio treats a multiplication as a rectangle. A rectangle 24 wide and 37 tall is cut by place value into four smaller rectangles — 20 by 30, 20 by 7, 4 by 30 and 4 by 7 — and the whole area is the four parts added together. Presenting multiplication as area does something the written methods cannot: it explains why splitting the numbers is allowed. A child working through a grid or a list of partial products is following a rule that happens to work; a child looking at a rectangle cut into four pieces can see that the pieces must add to the whole, because they are literally the same rectangle. That understanding is what stops the method collapsing the first time it is half-remembered. The area model is also the picture that later carries into algebra, where expanding two brackets is the same four rectangles with letters on the sides, so time spent here is repaid twice. The table gives the two splits and deliberately does not give the four areas, because if the areas were printed the only work left would be addition and the decomposition — the part actually worth practising — would be done for the child. The first two levels ask for a single rectangle so the model can be read before it is totalled; from the third level the question is the whole area, which is four multiplications and an addition and is honestly the hardest arithmetic in the grade 4 multiplication block. Free, no sign-up, no advertising to children, progress kept on the device.