Today was a chapter review for my 4th graders. The students will have a unit test tomorrow and I wanted to make sure they were ready. It did not turn out as I expected. The students almost felt like they were looking at new material when they saw the quiz. I gave them a few minutes to work alone filling in what they know.
Most of the students did very well on the terms that were introduced. Catch words triggered the definition of the term for them. I did not want them to be concerned about the spelling of the words so I gave them a list of the words they just had to fill in the blanks. Each sentence began with a term they chose and they searched the sentence for the words that caught their memory and made that relationship.
When it came to the rest of the test the students were almost lost. They wanted to put random numbers in the table instead of following the rule. Students were instructed to find the rule in some tables and given the rule in others. The given rule seemed to be more difficult for them. The money problems again were not an issue for them. Finding what the variable was after reading word did not seem to be a problem for them either. Knowing the relationship of <, >, and = was not a problem.
I started working with my 3rd grader today using TOUCH math. Today we only got through the numbers once. We have not progressed to adding by using this strategy yet. Tomorrow I plan to send a letter to the parents to inform them of what I am doing and how it is done. I am hoping they will consider helping me by using and encouraging this at home. I believe this will be a great benefit to him because he tries so hard to guess the right number. If I can help him to recognize the numbers I believe his math grade will improve.
TOUCH math: http://www.touchmath.com
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