Mathematizing Clean-Up

In my dyad placement the teacher asked the class if anyone knew where the pegs were for the three cribbage boards. Of course, no knew where the pegs were, and so the teacher asked the class what they could use as pegs so they could still play the game. After several suggestions, one boy raised his hand and said that his grandparents had lost their cribbage pegs and they were using colored tooth-picks as substitutes.

My teacher used this impromtu lesson as an opportunity to mathematize. She started by asking the students how many pegs were needed for each board? The students answered with two pegs per player, red for player one and blue for player two. This led to a series of multiplication problems, an area of math the students are just getting into. The questions included, if one board needs two red pegs, how many pegs would the class need for three boards? The students solved the question on their own and then turned to their neighbor and told them how they solved the problem.

After asking several math questions, the teacher wrote their answers on the board. This was also a list of what the class need for their cribbage boards. I thought this was a fun way of having the class figure out how many pegs they needed and at the same time demonstrate for them how multiplication is used in real life.