A Day in the Life....of 4th Grade Math

This morning I had the pleasure of observing a fourth grade math class. Though we have two mixed 4th/5th classrooms, every morning the students regroup by grade for math, and this year Jeff and Kellyne are teaching 4th grade math.

The class began with the teachers taking the students to the basketball court, and organizing them into two groups to play a 10-minute long math version of Giants, Elves and Wizards. One group was Even and the other was Odd; the teachers would shout a computation problem (such as 4x3), and the group with the appropriate characteristic to the answer (in this case Even) would then chase the other group to a safety line, attempting to tag as many people as they could (tagged students then had to switch sides and become part of the other group). This 10 minute warm up combined mental calculations of addition, subtraction, and multiplication, and knowledge of odd and even, with a kinesthetic action (chasing or fleeing) that motivated students to attempt to speed up their computational speed.

Everyone then moved inside to the rug, where they found their notebooks and pencils, and worked on a series of warm-up problems displayed on the interactive whiteboard. The students had 10 minutes to work on their own, and then 10 minutes of whole-group sharing and discussion about the problem set, which included logic problems (Two men play five games of chess, and each wins an equal amount as the other. How is this possible?), greater/less than symbol application (155 > 99), and connected pairs of algebraic problems involving addition or subtraction with one variable (If 27 - X = 20, what is X? Next, what is X + 14?)

The class then continued a stations-based work period begun earlier in the week, for about 30 minutes. One station drew on Marcy Cook curriculum for creating dynamic triple-digit addition equations involving regrouping. Two stations drew on JUMP! Math curriculum for investigations into linear measurement and time telling. One station drew on Everyday Math curriculum for work with pan balancing (solving equations using various weights on either side of a balance scale); and the last station contained cuisenaire rods for students to use in working with the Show Me 1/2 fractions curriculum. In the last five minutes of class, students returned to the rug to preview the homework assignment, ask clarifying questions, and organize their materials.

There were many aspects of this period that artfully embodied the elementary division's approach to instruction. The introductory activity (on the basketball court) combined the use of prior knowledge with current skill development, while providing movement-based reinforcement using a high-motivation game format. The second phase of the class (on the rug) provided guided practice on current concepts and whole-group sharing of strategies for arriving at answers, balancing individual students' desires to work alone (some students wore noise-canceling headphones to help them concentrate) or in groups (some students engaged in spirited conversation while attempting to solve the problems). The third phase of class (five table workstations) allowed for student-directed choice about which concept and activity to practice, and also gathered students together to support their understanding of how the homework connected with the work they had been doing. Taken as a whole, the tripartite structure of the lesson provided adequate time in each phase for students to dive into the knowledge and skills presented, while factoring in student motivation and the constraints of their ability to maintain attention.