The Homework Honey

Division can sometimes be an intimidating topic to work on with your child.  A lot of times in school, this is the first major struggle with math that my kids faced.  Division is something that will be a building block for the rest of your child's math learning.  It is very important that your child find a strategy that works for them.   3rd Grade Texas Standard: "The student is expected to: represent and solve one step and two step multiplication and division problems within 100 using arrays, strip diagrams, and equations. TEKS can be found at this website. http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/rules/tac/chapter111/ch111a.html#111.5 3rd Grade Common Core Standards: CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.3.OA.A.3 Use multiplication and division within 100 to solve word problems in situations involving equal groups, arrays, and measurement quantities. Common Core Standards can be found at the following w ebsite. http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/3/OA/ You may notice that these are t...

  About Me    Let   me start off by introducing myself.  My name is Rachel, in the picture with me is my husband Kyle, and my daughter Suzie.  I have a Bachelor's degree in Elementary Education and a Master's degree in Mathematics Curriculum and Instruction.  I was a 4th grade teacher for 3 years.  When my husband and I found out we were expecting a baby girl, we decided that I should be a stay at home mom.  I decided to do this blog because in all of the parent teacher conferences that I attended, parents always had questions about how to help their students at home. Now that home schooling and virtual school is so common, I felt that this would more helpful than ever.       My mom and both my aunts are teachers, and I always knew that I wanted to be a teacher.  When I was younger, I always wanted to play school with my younger brother.  He went into Kindergarten knowing his times tables because that's what I wa...

  Fourth grade is where multiplication strategies really get interesting.  There are so many new strategies being taught to kids about how to do multi-digit multiplication. This is one of the most difficult concepts that your child will master in fourth grade.  It is also such an important building block for their future math learning.   In 4th grade, teachers get between 5 to 10 days to teach multi-digit multiplication.  This is really not enough time for most of the children to master the skill, so it is great that you are helping them practice at home.  It is also important that you are on the same page as the teacher, when showing your child strategies and using mathematical vocabulary. Algorithm I am going to start out by showing you the simple algorithm step by step.  More than likely this is how you learned to multiply. I've broken this down into two parts so that I can explain each step a little easier. Step 1: The first step that you wan...

As I mentioned on my about me page, I was a fourth grade teacher for 3 years, but I did my student teaching in 3rd grade.  We are going to continue looking at the 3rd grade standards for Multiplication. The next standard we are going to look at is one that students often struggle with.  This would be a great skill for you to work on at home.  You can use some of the same pictoral models that I showed you on the New Math Multiplication post. 3rd Grade Texas Standard The student is expected to determine the unknown whole number in a multiplication or division equation relating three whole numbers when the unknown is either a missing factor or product. 3rd Grade Common Core Standard CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.3.OA.A.4 Determine the unknown whole number in a multiplication or division equation relating three whole numbers. As you can see, the standards are very similar.  

 As a teacher, it is interesting to sit in on parent teacher conferences and learn what non teachers don't know.  I'm not only talking about learning related things.  One thing that most parents don't know is that they have access to the exact same resources that teachers do.   Resources There are very few resources that teachers have access to that parents don't.  I worked in a Title 1 school for my 3 years of teaching.  This basically means that because of the social economic status of our students, we received extra funding from the state.  That sounds like it would be a big help, but in all actuality there were very specific things the school could spend the money on.  It was very rare, at least in fourth grade, that we all had enough textbooks for all of our students.  Which meant that they were very rarely used.  The majority of the resources that we used were free resources online.   Teacherspayteachers.com  Te...

      As a teacher, I always had parents asking me about new math. Let me set the record straight, THERE IS NO NEW MATH. The math hasn't changed, but some of the strategies that we teach with have. I am going to go over a few strategies that your child is learning in school and show you how to help them practice these at home.      We are going to start by looking at the standards. Teachers always begin by looking at what their students have to know. I taught in Texas, so we are going to begin by looking at the Texas standards called TEKS. (These are available online to everyone.) I will also include the common core standards because they are used by most other states. 3rd Grade Texas Standard: "The student is expected to: represent and solve one step and two step multiplication and division problems within 100 using arrays, strip diagrams, and equations. TEKS can be found at this website. http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/rules/tac/chapter111/ch1...