Week 2: Multiplication Fluency & Review

Good evening! Welcome to the second entry of my Personal Learning Path! Today is Tuesday, September 12th and we are almost one week into our new school year in my district.

Continuing my journey of rediscovering my love for math by tracking my classroom's process of learning Fourth Grade math, today I will be sharing the homework my students were assigned to complete -- only instead of showing my students work, I will be sharing my own!

Yes, I am going to complete the homework I am assigning my students so I can review (and in some cases relearn) the fourth grade math curriculum. 

This week, our students are digging into learning the relationship between multiplication and division. When we multiply, we are completing the opposite operation of division and vice versa.

Using tape diagrams, students were given a sentence...

"36 is _____ times as many as 9."

...then an equation to solve...

"_____ = _____ x 9."

Students use their knowledge of multiplication to determine that 36 is 4 times as many as 9. Then they complete the equation.

In addition, students review how to add and subtract three-digit numbers. Borrowing and regrouping is still a challenge for some of my students -- when one student complete question 5, they scribbled "This is impossible" next to their incorrect sum. 

I met with this student and tried to encourage her by modeling my own completion of the problem and then explaining that it is always better to try and fail, then not try and never gain. 

See below for images of the homework assignment:

The second assignment assesses students' ability to recognize that multiplication is the opposite operation of division. The students are given a tape diagram and given a statement:

"56 is 7 times as many as _____."

"56 divided by 7 = _____."

Here, students must really know their multiplication tables so they can recognize that 8 times 7 equals 56. 

Finally, students are given rectangles and asked to circle the options which have an area of 8 square units. Some of the rectangles contain squares which are unevenly sized, so they are not perfect squares and they do not have an area of 8 square units.

See below for images of this homework assignment:

I find it interesting to meet with students and learn what they are finding challenging and develop strategies to help them solve the problems at hand. 

Looking forward to diving in deeper next week! Thank you.