Kevin's Personal Learning Path

Good evening and welcome to Week 10 of my blog entry. This week, I worked with my students on how to effectively interpret and complete multiplication word problems.  I preface my lesson by reminding my students that "reading and math are friends," which means that when you see a word problem, you have to circle important information and underline what the problem is asking you to do.  So, if a puppy weighs 18 pounds and Jayla says her dog weight 4 times as much as the puppy, the question is "what are we given," and "what do we need to solve for?"  I circle "18 pounds" because that is our given, and I circle "4 times" because that tells us that this is a multiplication problem and we must multiply our given by 4. The student may use an area model to complete this problem, but most of my students are at the point where they are able to use standard algorithm multiplication to complete this problem. They know that 4x8 is 32. Carry the 3 a...

Welcome to Week 9 of my blog entry! This week, my students became confident with learning how to multiply using the distributive property. I am please with their progress and how they have been able to recall the concept of place values to decompose a number, then multiple each party to arrive at a product.  Before each lesson, I have my students stand up behind their desks and run through their multiplication facts with them. They must be fluent with their facts if they are going to understand the distributive property. The students who struggle are the ones who are either not practicing their facts or are not receiving support they need. Once we finish drilling, I begin the lesson. I show the students how to decompose a number before multiplying it by a given factor. Then, In show them how to correct their work using standard algorithm multiplication. I am proud to see that the students are using this latter process so effectively. they recall "pickling," which is when you ...