Great hands on activity for 6th - 8th graders struggling or just learning the Distributive Property. I like to tell my students that a fun way to remember Distributive Property is that the parenthesis are like a bowl and the term in front is going to be "double dipped" (or "triple dipped" depending on how many terms are inside the parenthesis) into the bowl. I always have them circle the term in front including the sign so it's easier for them to remember it when distributing.
Materials Needed:
Half Sheet of Paper (write boxes and parenthesis as pictured)
3 dice (I put in one red one for the older kids to represent a negative number)
Whiteboard or paper and pencil
Students roll the dice and place the dice in the boxes
(if they are using a red dice for negative numbers, then just put it in either of the first 2 boxes)
Students write the problem formed when the roll the dice and solve!
My summer class of 7th graders wanted to make a competition of it. So, we set a timer to see who could solve the most distributive property problems correctly the fastest. It was funny to watch them catch on that when they rolled a 1 they would put it in the first box so they didn't have to distribute or "double dip" like I call it. :)
