Multiplication and Division (1) - Factors - Planning

The curriculum for Year 5 students during the Autumn term includes a week dedicated to understanding factors within the context of multiplication and division. The lesson plan incorporates a range of resources such as counters, worksheets, and a presentation to facilitate learning. The key vocabulary for the lesson includes terms like 'factor', 'common factor', 'product', 'multiply', 'divide', 'divisible', 'systematic', and 'pattern', with additional support available in the form of vocabulary cards and definitions. The lesson begins with a recap of previous learning, followed by an activity where students use 20 counters to explore different array configurations, discovering the factors of 20 by listing the number of counters in each row or column. This hands-on approach helps students to grasp the concept that factors are numbers which multiply together to give a product, and they further practice this by finding all the factors of 18 using counters.

Further activities involve identifying factors of given numbers, such as 60, 25, and 30, and working out missing factor pairs for 12 and 24. The students are encouraged to use a systematic approach, starting from 1 and working their way up, to ensure they find all possible factors. This method also helps to identify patterns within factor pairs, such as doubling one factor and halving its pair to find another valid combination. Group work and independent activities deepen understanding, and the lesson concludes with a reflective 'Give me five' session where students consider what they've learned about factors, the skills they've used and found challenging, and the strategies that aided their learning. Differentiated worksheets cater to varying levels of proficiency, with some students working on proving true or false statements, while others focus on distinguishing between multiples and factors, or even breaking codes by understanding the relationship between the two.