Japanese Math: By: Ashley Hassard, Alexandra Mark

Miller, and Caitlin Reynolds

Visual Multiplication
Goals

● Have students learn about a way of visually representing the multiplication of multi-digit whole
numbers

Curriculum Expectations

“In elementary school mathematics, students represent

mathematical ideas and relationships and model
situations using concrete materials, pictures, diagrams,
graphs, tables, numbers, words, and symbols. Learning
the various forms of representation helps students to
understand mathematical concepts and relationships;
communicate their thinking, arguments, and
understandings; recognize connections among related
mathematical concepts; and use mathematics to model
and interpret realistic problem situations.

Students should be able to go from one representation

to another, recognize the connections between
representations, and use the different representations
appropriately and as needed to solve problems.”
(Ontario Math Curriculum Grades 1-8, p. 16)

Materials

● White board for every student (can be made with a white piece of paper inside a plastic page
protector)
● Coloured dry erase markers (at least 3 colours per student)
● NOTE: Coloured markers or pencil crayons and paper will also work

Optional Materials
● Large chart paper and markers for “graffiti brainstorming”
● Slideshow of photographs from a trip to Japan
● Audio-visual equipment with internet to play instructional video
● Thin coloured wooden dowels

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Lesson

Introduction (5 minutes)
● Graffiti Board: Ask students to draw or write down
anything they might know about Japan on their
corner of a communal piece of chart paper.
● Time them for one minute. Afterwards, everybody
can share what they came up with.

Lesson (10 minutes)

● Introduce visual multiplication using coloured lines to show place value (Appendix A)
● An explanatory YouTube video can be played at this point (Appendix B)

Activity (15 minutes)

● Students can choose to use the wooden dowels or markers and
paper
● Challenge students to figure out a few teacher-directed questions
together as a group; then students can pair up and challenge
each other

Closure (5 minutes)
● Have a discussion about whether this is a method of visual
multiplication that they would use

Possible Extensions

● Challenge students to think about when this method is helpful and when it might not be (e.g.
when is this method more laborious than algorithms they know)
● Ask students why this method works

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Appendix A

Appendix B

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e-P5RGdjICo

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