Writers are working on an informative writing task involving news articles for a holiday-themed newspaper. Newspaper staffs are busy working on a front page article, a feature article, editorial, letters to Santa, an advice column, and much more! Look for these newspapers to come home in Friday Folders on December 20th. The excitement and enthusiasm is high and I'm looking forward to reading the newspapers! 

 

Math: (Mr. Shipp)

Hello 4th grade families!

I am very proud of the progress our students are making in our math class.  So far this year we have completed the first four units and are just beginning Topic 5.  The next 4 Topics will cover Multiplication and Number Sense. Any help you can give at home in working with your children and their multiplication fluency will benefit them moving forward.  

We are going to take the next steps in making multiplication more complex by multiplying bigger numbers.  Topic 5 allows the students to use basic facts to make bigger numbers by adding “0’s” to the product, for example: 5 x 8 = 40 so 5 x 80 = 400.  Topic 6 will build on those skills and allow our students to multiply 2-digit and 3- digit numbers by a single digit, for example 42 x 8 and 423 x 8. 

I would love your help in teaching our students the standard algorithm of multiplication.  Often I explain to parents that this is the way we learned how to multiply when we were younger.  So, by the time our students reach Topics 7 and 8 they will feel more confident in completing problems like this:

  23 

X12

 046

 230

 276

Please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have about any of these Topics.  

James Shipp

[email protected]