Array Community: Math and Social Studies

Practicing multiplication arrays while learning about communities

There never seems to be enough time to get everything that I want to get done completed during the day. Because of this, I have been forced to think creatively and combine different things I am doing.

Now this post here has been sitting in my drafts for 2 years. I began writing it pre-pandemic and then....well, you know what happened next. Things got away from me. So here it is, 2 years after I first blogged about it. Don't worry though, it aged well ;)

Third grade has a heavy focus on community in social studies. So we began by talking about three types of communities -- urban, suburban, and rural. We watched some BrainPop and then read the text in our social studies book to gather information on the three types of communities. Putting it all together, we created this class chart. Using the chart, the kids then wrote an opinion paragraph on which type of community they would like to live in themselves.

Then, to connect it to math, I lead the students in a a directed drawing of a full community. I had the rural area in the foreground, with a force perspective of the other two communities in the background. The kids really enjoyed this part, as coloring in third grade is still a hit!

Once the drawing was complete, I gave the students some rectangles. Those rectangles were to simulate buildings in the various community spaces. They then needed to draw "windows" on the buildings in the shape of arrays. To differentiate this a bit, based upon their level of multiplication knowledge, I gave my students a different set of tables to create the arrays from.

Combining math and social studies to practice arrays

After each of the array buildings were completed, the students then glued them onto their directed drawing. I had them record the math on a recording sheet. Each of the arrays was to be written in both repeated addition and as a multiplication sentence.