Methodical Math Mania!

November 4, 2018 | Posted in: Class Updates

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In room 209, we have been working hard on a variety of different math skills.  In our current unit, which we’ll be assessing this week, students have learned about factors, multiples, the order of operations, patterns, problem solving, and more.  I hope that the videos I’ve posted are helpful to you, both in keeping you up to date on what skills we’re covering and in better equipping you to support your fourth grader.  Students have been working very hard in math.

Our first math unit focused on place value, addition, and subtraction.  You may be wondering about the unit 1 assessment scores.  When I review student assessment results, I look to see what strengths emerged and which areas were challenging for students.  When I see that a few students have struggled with a particular area, I pull groups to review the difficult skills.  When the number of students struggling with a skill is larger, it shows me that I need to do some reteaching for the whole class.   On the unit 1 assessment, I saw that the majority of students continued to need practice with rounding and with a few other place value skills.  Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reviewing various skills with small and large groups of students, and we’re going to continue this work to ensure that students have a solid foundation for our upcoming units.  So while these assessments haven’t gone home yet, I look forward to reviewing them with you in person at our upcoming parent conference so we can discuss your fourth grader’s progress.

We’re also working on improving students’ addition and subtraction facts.  Students are making progress in these skills, but this may also be a good focus for home practice.  This may come as a surprise for you, as the big focus in third grade was multiplication.  Fear not, we’ll soon return to multiplication facts as we dive into the multiplication units of study.  But I often find that students’ addition and subtraction fact mastery tends to slip when they shift their focus to multiplication.  So by taking the first marking period to work on addition and subtraction facts, I’m again hoping that students will have a solid basis for the skills in the upcoming units of study.