Lesson 22

The purpose of this warm-up is to introduce the context of gardening, which will be useful when students plan a garden in a later activity. While students may notice and wonder many things about this image, the spacing of the plants is the important discussion point.

• Groups of 2
• Display the image.
• “What do you notice? What do you wonder?”
• 1 minute: quiet think time

• “Discuss your thinking with your partner.”
• 1 minute: partner discussion
• Share and record responses. 

• “Many families, schools, or communities have gardens to grow their own fruits and vegetables.”
• “If we were to start a school garden, what are some things we would have to think about?” (What plants do we want to grow? How many? How would we arrange the plants? How much space would the garden take up? Do we have enough space? How many fruits and vegetables would we harvest?)
• “This photograph shows a strawberry patch at the beginning of the season. Plants need to be spaced out so they have enough room to grow.”
• “Today we’ll learn about some plants and think about the arrangements that help them grow the best and plan part of a community garden.”

The purpose of this activity is for students to use multiplication and division to solve problems about growing strawberries. They draw diagrams and write expressions or equations to represent each situation, and solve the problem. The given context encourages students to think of equal groups, arrays, or rectangular areas.

In previous lessons, students have been asked to write either an equation or expression. This activity gives them an opportunity to make a choice. Alternatively, teachers may opt to instruct students to write either an equation or expression.

• Groups of 2
• “Strawberries are grown in patches arranged in rows.”
• “In this activity, you’ll see how strawberries are arranged and how many fruits a strawberry plant will produce. In the next activity you will plan your own garden.”

• 2 minutes: independent work time
• 10 minutes: partner work time
• Monitor for students who:
  • write multiplication or division expressions or equations
  • are able to represent the same situation with both multiplication and division

• Invite previously selected students to share.
• “How did the diagrams help you think about the problem?”
• “Where do you see the numbers from the equation in the diagram?”

The purpose of this activity is to use students’ experience with multiplication and division within 100 to plan a school garden. In this activity, students make choices about which produce to grow. The choices are guided by some constraints, such as a desired yield. Students draw diagrams to represent how the plants are arranged in the garden and how they bear fruit. If needed, students can be provided with images to see how the different plants grow.

• Groups of 2 or 4
• “In this activity, you will plan part of the school garden.”
• Give students access to grid paper.

• “Work with your partner to complete the activity. Pay attention to the amounts of fruits or vegetables your garden should produce.”
• 15 minutes: partner work time
• As students are working, consider asking:
  • “What choices did you make?”
  • “What were your reasons?”
  • “How many fruits and vegetables will you be able to harvest?”
• Monitor for students who:
  • write expressions or equations

• Invite students to share their plans.
• “How did the growing information help you plan your garden?” (I was able to see how to arrange the rows and columns in my garden. The growing information told me how much fruit I will get.)