Unit 1 - Puzzles, Clusters, and Towers
In this unit, students focus on gaining fluency with multiplication strategies. Students work on understanding division situations and developing strategies for division problems with 1-digit and 2-digit divisors. Students spend time discussing problems in depth and are asked to share their reasoning and solutions. It is most important that children accurately and efficiently solve math problems in ways that make sense to them. At home, encourage your child to explain his or her math thinking to you.
Activities to Try at Home
Estimating Any time you need to estimate amounts at home, try to involve your child. Look for ways to count or estimate large numbers of things, like floor tiles or windowpanes, or the number of cookies you’ll need to make for a big party. Encourage your child to think of different ways to figure out about how many.
Everyday Computation Notice when you use multiplication and division in your everyday life. Enlist your child’s help. For example, if you are planning a picnic, have your child help figure out what you need to buy. If there are 20 slices in a loaf of bread, how many loaves will you need if each person eats two sandwiches?
How Did You Solve That? Ask your child to tell you about how he or she is multiplying and dividing. Show that you are interested in these approaches. Because these strategies may be unfamiliar to you, listen carefully to your child’s explanation; you might even try to do a problem or two, using the new procedure. Let your child be the teacher!
Modeling Division Situations At school, students have been solving word problems that represent various types of division situations. Encourage your child to help you solve situations that come up in your daily activities. For example, while shopping you might ask, “If you can buy 2 pencils for 29 cents, about how many can you buy for $3.00?” or “I baked a batch of 136 muffins for the bake sale. I need to put them in bags of 5. How many bags can I fill with 5 muffins in each bag?”