ABSTRACT
One day in late spring in a classroom in New Jersey, Ms. Jones put the following problem on the overhead projector along with four possible answers: 56 × 24. She then told her children to turn off their calculators and said, “Let’s just look at the strategy here. You won’t have the calculator for this part. You’ll get paper and a pencil. You will have a choice on day of the test whether to have lined or unlined paper. I like lines ’cause I like things orderly. So knowing that, let’s look at what we have to multiply. We have to multiply by the ones digit. Which one is the ones digit?” The children then identified the six and the four as the being in the ones place and multiplied them together to get 24. At that point, she told the children they could rule out two answers because they didn’t end in four. She then passed out paper and had the children follow the conventional steps for multiplying 56 by 24. She then called on one student, Lindsey, who worked aloud on the problem, identifying the steps needed in order to get the solution.
