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computation skills
Posted:
Apr 9, 1999 10:44 AM
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I want to reinforce what Barbara wrote about wanting students to be
able to figure out facts efficiently. Let families know this is more
than rote memorization. It involves relating a fact to patterns in its
table and to other facts. With practice doing this, students will
memorize more and more facts, but they will have a richer knowledge of
the numbers than if they memorize the facts in isolation.
By the end of fourth grade students can also be fluent with multiples
of 20, 25, 50, and multiples of some other multiples of 10 (30, 40,
60). Families can practice counting by and counting around and talk
about patterns in the multiples they are saying. For example, if one
person says 3, the other 6, the first 9, etc. the first person will be
saying the odd multiples of 3 while the second will be saying the even
multiples of 3 which are the multiples of 6. They might follow this
by figuring out together the multiples of 30.
A possible homework assignment is to ask students to write what they
know about one number: it's factor pairs, some fractions and division
statements about it, where it is used. This is related to the Ten
Minute Math activity, Seeing Numbers. Students can write a lot about
numbers with many factors such as 24, 30, 42, 48, 60. Students might
also pick a number that they tend to forget the fact for such as 21 or
54, or try larger numbers such as 144 or 240 or 420.
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