Take three hands-up answers and bank them on the board without grading: count them one at a time, count the rows, multiply six by four. All three are reasonable — the lesson will land on the third as the fastest. Five seconds of quiet think-time before any hands go up.

Walk each example aloud, slowly. Pause on the units after each multiplication — the cm² answer is the bit pupils most often drop.

• 6 × 4 = 24 cm² — count the rows of six together: 6, 12, 18, 24.
• 5 × 5 = 25 cm² — emphasise it is a square (equal sides) but the formula is still length × width.
• 8 × 3 = 24 cm² — the surprise reveal. Same area as Example 1, different shape. Pause here for a quick maths-talk: 'how can two different rectangles have the same area?' Listen for the answer that mentions the same number of unit squares can be rearranged into different rectangles.

This is the climactic moment of the model arc — the formula falls out because we do not want to count individual squares any more. Take it slowly: name the length, name the width, multiply, then attach the square-unit (cm²). After the reveal, ask the class to say the formula aloud: area equals length times width.

This round is for talking it through together — pupils take turns at the board and the class agrees or corrects out loud.

Three rectangles to work through on the IWB:

• 4 × 7 (= 28 cm²) — fresh dimensions, average size, easy first turn.
• 6 × 8 (= 48 cm²) — bigger numbers; ask the class to predict before the pupil at the board reads the readout.
• 9 × 5 (= 45 cm²) — the biggest. After this one ask 'what does the cm² on the readout tell us?' — keep coming back to the unit-of-square thinking, not just the multiplication.

Pupils at desks watch the board and call out their prediction before the pupil at the IWB confirms.