We warmed up on listing factor pairs for 64,65,66,67 & 68. Students list these in their math notebooks and keep track of their progress.We use a factor pair calculator to check our work if we get stuck or question if a number is prime. The conversations about number sense, products and divisibility are rich and I can see number sense and fluency growing before my very eyes each time.
It looks like this:
64
1x64
2x32
4x16
8x8
Notice that the first factor in each pair is listed in numerical order. This gives kids an organized way of listing pairs. It organizes their thoughts and makes it easy to think about divisibility rules. They get fluent really fast with this type of organized process. I am watching it become more fluent and watching students become more comfortable.
To get their mindset ready to be quizzed, I played this little video they had seen before their last test. They love it. When all was settled down, I passed out the quiz. I wrote the quiz to have two samples of each problem because I think it is enough of a chance to show me what they know.
I am hoping that they can remember to add their partial products. They seem to lose sight of the idea that the equation represents so many groups of a number or rows x columns. I also hope they multiply by tens correctly and look to see that their answer makes sense. This quiz should take 30-45 minutes to complete for the slower student. Students who finished ahead of time were allowed to play a math ap on their iPad with their headphones plugged in.
To close our quiz time today, I brought the standard 4.NBT.B.5 up on the Smart Board for a discussion. I asked for a show of hands as to how many of them think they did well. I asked how many felt secure that they mastered understanding that each place value had to be multiplied and then added to get the final product. One student said they didn't think they would understand how to do the model, but they did well on the test. Another student said she almost forgot to add the partial products but then remembered she needed one answer for the problem.