Math In Action

With each day that passes, our routines become smoother.  Today I happened across the fourth grade class working on math, specifically multiplication.  Our math instruction is planned to continue the Math In Focus curriculum from the school year, while zooming in on student needs for particular skills and strategies. 

One of the most important ways we can teach math to students is to use the progression of "Concrete, Pictorial, and Abstract" during instruction.  Concrete refers to using hands-on manipulatives to demonstrate strategies.  Pictorial means making a representation on paper of the math in picture form.  When you get to the abstract stage, you are taking the same information from your concrete and pictorial representations and assigning numbers (or, in the case of algebra, letters) in a number sentence to the math.

This is exactly what I saw in action today as fourth graders were working on multiplication.  They used foam chips to make arrays of multiplication sentences, then they drew a picture of their arrays, and then completed the number sentence.

Building Arrays

Here is the chart they made to use as a guide in the classroom.

The fourth graders are also playing math games each day, as are our other grade levels.  Maybe ask your child about the math games s/he is playing in class and try it out at home?  What a fun way to practice our math skills!