I had a comment from Richard that some of his kids are having trouble with the addition and subtraction involved in this process of multiplication and division. Here is something you might try. One of the teachers at my school gave kids a set of array cards with an erasable marker. The used the marker as ' a pair of scissors' to make imaginary cuts in the array. They took one of the larger array cards and drew a line dividing it into two parts. Then they recorded the equations that would describe the two parts. They erased the line, put the card back in the pile and pulled another card to do it again. This seemed to help kids a lot with notation. Some kids worked slowly and some went very quickly and did many more, but they all understood how to break an array apart.
When students have a difficult problem, the teacher can help them by drawing the array on the board and thinking with them about ways to make an imaginary cut. Only do this for the kids who are struggling. Give those who are successful a set of multiplication problems with larger numbers and have them solve with break apart and represent as an array.
We discussed giving students homework that was an equation - something like 19 x 6.
Ask them to write a story problem, solve it in two ways and draw the array. For children who are struggling, the problem might be 12 x 6, or 13 x 6. For those that are working quickly, you might chose something like 28 x 9, 0r even 128 x 9.
Hope this helps.
I am adding some pictures of student work, some from daily lessons and some from morning work.
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