Third-grade students in the classes of teachers Devon Straub and Karlie Young recently became “distributive doctors.” They learned that they could use the distributive property to break apart factors into the sum of two other easier factors that they could multiply mentally. In order to show this, they had to get their surgery attire on and cut and break apart these arrays. The students enjoyed performing their surgeries and were able to model and describe the steps of the distributive property.
