Numerical expressions using multiplication or division: Applied

It’s the beginning of a new school year, and Lina’s first day taking the school bus! She wants to figure out how many people will ride her bus each day. She waits at the stop with two neighbours. The bus pulls up, and Lina and the others get on. They’re the first three on the bus.

Lina asks the driver how many stops the bus will make. He tells her this is the bus’s first stop, and there are four in total, before they arrive at school. Lina makes a plan. She lists the four stops so she can write down how many people get on at each. Stop 1 is three people, including herself.

The bus pulls away, and soon arrives at the next stop. Three more people get on. At the third stop, another three people get on. And here we are at the fourth stop, the last one before they reach school. Three more people get on.

Lina looks at her list. She can see that: There are four bus stops, and three people get on at each. Did you know, Lina, you can write this information as a number sentence? Writing a number sentence is a simpler way to show a list of values like yours. A number sentence has at least two numbers, with an operation, like add, subtract, multiply, or divide, between them.

We know that three people got on at each of four stops. So we can write three times four. Aha! We have our number sentence! Number sentences help us show real-life situations… And then how to solve them!

Three multiplied by four is… 12. And that’s how many people ride your bus, Lina!