The weather outside was frightful, but problem-solving using multiplication was delightful for fourth grade students in Christina Colletti’s and Jessica Barrett’s class at Winthrop Avenue School.

To improve their math fluency and ability to solve word problems, the students created holiday homes out of colorful construction paper and arrays, an arrangement of objects, pictures or numbers placed in columns and rows to represent mathematical concepts. The students solved word problems and illustrated their answers with equations, pictures and bar diagrams. The information was then transferred to squares and arranged as arrays to resemble windows on their holiday homes. The students added festive decorations to celebrate the impending holiday season.