This lesson is made up of four activities that help students develop their number sense. Specifically, students make connections between arrangements of objects in groups and arrays and written expressions. Students also work on understanding and generating equivalent expressions and area models (which make connections between rectangles, arrays, area, multiplication and the distributive property).

In addition to the four central activities, the lesson also includes seven additional practice handouts, two extension activities, and 6 Test Practice questions.

This would be a great lesson to use before introducing students to instructional routines like Number of the Day and/or number talks.

This sample lesson comes from Everyday Number Sense: Mental Math and Visual Models, which is part of the EMPower Math Series, and includes the notes from the Teacher Book and all of the activity handouts from the Student Book.