MATH: Transitioning to the "Partial Products" Multiplication Strategy

On homelink 9-4, students have their first opportunity to practice the Partial Products Strategy at home. We've been transitioning to this multiplication strategy over the last two class periods, as this strategy will give us more "room to grow" so to speak, when we get to two digit x two digit problems.

So far, we've used Partial Products to solve one digit x two digit problems, as well as one digit x three digit problems.

I wanted to give a step by step example of the strategy, as it is quite different from the traditional algorithm we parents learned growing up.

I'll use the same problem we used from the earlier post: 6 x 23.

First, we record the problem vertically.

We still break apart the two-digit number into it's basic parts: 20 and 3, and we show that we will multiply both by the other factor, 6.

Then we solve both parts, lining up our products along the ones-place so it's easy to add together.

Last, we add up our products for our final answer.

Let me know if you have any questions!

SPELLING: Week of March 30th

This week's patterns:

Suffixes
-ful (full of)
-ible (able to)
-ness (state or quality of)
-less (without)

Here is our list:

1. delightful
2. respectful
3. forgetful
4. joyful

5. convertible
6. flexible
7. reversible
8. invisible

9. darkness
10. loudness
11. cleverness
12. cheerfulness

13. worthless
14. breathless
15. cloudless
16. ageless

Watch Out Words
17. rode (past tense of 'ride')
18. road (like a street)
19. rowed (with a paddle)



 

Math: Beginning One Digit x Two Digit Multiplication

We can solve multiplication facts, like 6 x 3 = 18.

And recently, we've been working to solve extended facts, like 6 x 20 = 120. In extended facts, we use our knowledge of facts to solve problems using multiples of 10, 100, and 100.

Now we are taking it one step further, to solve a one digit x two digit problem, but where the two digit number is not a multiple of 10.

Here’s an example of the type of problem I’m talking about: 6 x 23.

In class today, we learned how to solve this problem by applying what we already know. We showed our work in a concrete way, as follows.

First, we broke apart the two-digit number into 20 and 3. If we multiply each of these parts by 6, and then put the parts back together, we’ll get our answer.

Next, we record our work of multiplying each part by 6. We use our fact power to multiply 3x6 and our knowledge of fact extensions to multiply 20x6.

Finally, we take our two parts, 120 and 18, and add them back together to come to our final answer.

We start out with this visual strategy as a bridge towards the "Partial Products" algorithm, which will eventually become our main strategy for multi-digit multiplication. I hope this helps on the home-front as your child is moving into some new territory.

SPELLING: Week of March 23rd

This week's patterns:

Closed Prefixes (prefix ends with a consonant)
un-, im-, in-, mis-, dis- (all meaning "not" or "opposite" of base word)

Open Prefixes (prefix ends with a vowel)
re- (meaning "again"), pre- (meaning "before")

Here is our list:

1. unafraid
2. unintentional
3. imperfect
4. impolite
5. inactive
6. incomplete
7. mislead
8. mispronounce
9. distrust
10. dismount

11. repaint
12. renumber
13. rebound
14. preschool
15. prepaid 
16. pretest

Watch Out Words
17. vein  (like a blood vessel)
18. vain  (only worried about looks)
19. vane  (like a weather vane)

SPELLING: Week of March 16th

This week's patterns:

-tial
-cious
-tious

Here is our list:

1. spatial
2. initial
3. partial
4. essential
5. potential

6. delicious
7. precious
8. suspicious
9. spacious
10. vicious

11. cautious
12. nutritious
13. superstitious


Watch Out Words
14. knew
15. new
16. pour (like you pour some water)
17. pore (tiny opening in your skin)

SPELLING: Week of March 9th

This week's patterns:

'qua'
'y' as /i/
'cial'

Here is our list:

1. quacks
2. quality
3. quart
4. quadrangle
5. quantity

6. gym
7. symbol
8. myth
9. crystal
10. system
11. mystery

12. social
13. facial
14. special
15. glacial
16. crucial

Watch Out Words
17. sore (ouch!)
18. soar (fly!)
19. whether
20. weather (rain...)

Book Club Revolution!

So a few of our boys found several copies of a book in the library today. They decided to each check-out a copy and start their own book club. (Ahh, music to a teacher's ears, right?)

I invited them to use a round of Daily 5 every few days to meet together to talk about their book. They were pretty excited, to say the least. When I let the rest of the class know about the book club the boys had started, the idea spread like wildfire!

Many students used a Daily 5 today to organize a book club of their own. Currently, we have three different book clubs, reading three different books, and several more students thinking about starting one this week.

As a class, we took a few minutes to set up some "ground rules," because while book clubs are fun and a powerful way to improve as a reader and learn from other readers, there are some stumbling blocks that can get in the way sometimes. Here are some of the things we decided on:

• It's a commitment. If you decide to join a book club, you are committing to read the book. Think carefully about your interest-level in the book before making the commitment.
• You don't have to be in a book club.
• It's not just a club. We must be extremely careful that people don't feel excluded, but also recognize that book clubs are normally rather small, 4-6 people usually.
• Set up a schedule.  Make sure the group knows what to read and when.
• Meet once or twice a week to talk about what's happening in the book.

Wow, it's an exciting time to be a third grader. Have your child let me know if he/she wants to be part of a book club, and I'll help to get one set up!

Book-Clubbers... UNITE!