Mrs. Carter is organizing some of her school supplies that came in square boxes. She is trying to figure out the best way to arrange them. She knows she wants everything to be arranged in a single layer as a rectangle, but she is not sure how to arrange the boxes to make the rectangles. Can you help Mrs. Carter?
Mrs. Carter has 18 square boxes of tacks. How many different rectangles can she make with the 18 boxes of tacks? What are the dimensions of each of the different rectangles?
Source: Task taken from Bridges in Mathematics 2nd edition, Grade 4, and shared by Stephanie Rousseau, Sudbury, MA Public Schools.
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I did this routine and task with a very small (2 students) pullout group of fifth graders who are working well below grade level across all subject areas. It was incredibly worthwhile to have them slow down and articulate what the problem was about. There was some confusion at first about the word “question”, because I think we often call any problem a question, when really it’s just the one or two questions within a problem. For that step, students wanted to regurgitate the entire situation. So we had to stop and talk about how we can find the exact question being asked, and then have them put it into their own words. Their incredible Special Education teacher (I’m a coach) who teaches the group daily, took this to routine to a whole new level and put the steps into a color-coded Brain Frame. See attached. So excited to spread this beyond our small group of 2!