Math

Hi Parents,
Our new math program is going really well.  I am impressed with the knowledge students gained in fractions in the last unit.  Students were able to use many manipulatives and dig deeper into understanding of fractions and their relationship with decimals.  Unit 4, our current math unit, is mostly on multiplication.  This unit gives multiple ways to solve multiplication problems including partial products and lattice multiplication.  The way the unit is designed, the traditional form of multiplication that most of us learned in school, isn't introduced until fifth grade.  That being said, most of the students were introduced to traditional multiplication in third grade.  I will continue to show / model how to use traditional multiplication, but I will be teaching the students how to complete partial products and lattice multiplication.
This may be confusing for you in how to help your child.  I am including two videos for you to review these two multiplication strategies.  If you are still stuck, I encourage you to show your child how you would solve the problem and work with them using that strategy.  I think it is important for your child to see that there are many ways to solve math problems and that using any of these ways still gets you the answer.  If you child has many ways to solve a math problem, they are able to show flexible thinking and better number understanding.

Partial Product



Lattice Multiplication