Students explored patterns in the multiplication table and made connections to area in a previous lesson. In this lesson, they observe more patterns and structures in the multiplication table that highlight properties of multiplication and are helpful for multiplying numbers. Although there is an opportunity to highlight several properties, the focus of this lesson is the commutative property (though students are not expected to name the property). Students notice that multiplying two numbers in any order gives the same product and make use of this observation to find unknown products (MP8).