This lesson introduces students to the multiplication table as a way to organize and find products of two whole-number factors (up to 10). Students begin by marking rectangles on blank multiplication tables, always starting from the upper left corner, and finding their areas. They see that the area of each rectangle is the product of the numbers at the right boundary and the bottom boundary of the rectangle.

Through repeated reasoning, students see that finding the value of each cell in the table is like finding the area of a rectangle whose side lengths are a number from the top of the table and a number from the left. Along the way, students notice patterns in the table and make use of them to complete the rest of the table (MP8).

With which multiplication facts did students seem most confident as they found products in the multiplication table? For those they did not know right away, what strategy did they use?