Math Skills Review: The Final 9 Weeks

The 4th quarter of the school year is coming to an end with organized chaos as usual!  Classrooms all over the country are counting down the days until summer break and parents are trying to survive what is probably the busiest month of the school year.  The last nine weeks of the school year typically interrupts instructional time more than any other due to Spring Break, state testing, district benchmark testing, and a long list of end-of-year activities and assemblies.  However, teachers still plunge ahead and seize every opportunity to teach what they can when they can in an effort to cover as much of the required curriculum for their grade level as possible.  

Take a look at these important math skills usually taught in the 4th quarter. You can help your student confidently finish out the school year in math by reviewing the following depending on their grade level. Remember that reviewing these skills through extra practice and repetition increases the chance of skill mastery and retention of what they have learned. 

3rd Grade

• Elapsed Time: In 3rd grade students learn to tell time to the minute and just as they are feeling confident in their abilities here come those elapsed time problems in which they must determine how much time has passed between a given starting and ending time.
• Area and Perimeter: 3rd graders also will learn how to find the area and perimeter of squares, rectangles and figures made up of combinations of these two shapes.  *Frequently the most challenging problems for students in this chapter will be drawing a rectangle with a given area and finding the value of a missing side length of a rectangle when given the perimeter and other side lengths.

4th Grade

• Understanding and Converting Units of Measurement:  4th graders expand their knowledge of measuring length, weight and liquid volume using units of measurement from both customary and metric systems of measurement.  They will use multiplication to convert larger amounts into smaller amounts.  Yes, this means they need to know relationships between these units of measurement (e.g., 12 inches = 1 foot; 4 quarts = 1 gallon; 10 millimeters = 1 centimeter, etc.)
• Finding the Area of Combined Rectangles: In 4th grade students will be challenged to find the area of a figure that is not a square or rectangle.  Their task will be to partition the figure into sections made up of rectangles and/or squares, find missing side lengths of the shapes they partitioned using existing lengths from the original figure, finding the area of each square of rectangle they created, and then finally adding those areas together to get the total area of the original figure.

5th Grade

• Converting Units of Measurement: In 5th grade, the instruction on customary and metric units of measurement is leveled up as they learn how to convert back and forth between larger and smaller units using multiplication and division.  When solving problems to convert a smaller unit of measurement into a larger unit using division, students will frequently be given a measurement that does not evenly convert and write their answer as a combination of mixed measures (e.g. 150 inches = 12 feet, 6 inches).
• Ordered Pairs:  5th graders are introduced to Quadrant I on the coordinate plane and learn how to identify and graph points using the x-axis and y-axis. This skill is further developed as students are taught how to change related number pairs from a given set of data on a table to ordered pairs in order to display and analyze it in the form of a line graph.

6th Grade

• Box Plots:  Statistics and Probability is a new math cornerstone that students are introduced to in 6th grade.  Just a PSA, if you think your 6th grader will just be learning about finding the mean, median and mode of a data set, THINK AGAIN.  Most 6th grade math curriculums go on to include creating box plots for statistical data which includes calculating and displaying on the box plot the median, the upper quartile and the lower quartile. Sound confusing? Imagine being a 6th grader.
• Surface Area: Gone are the days of just finding the area of one rectangle.  In 6th grade students will learn how to calculate the surface area of different prisms and pyramids.  The surfaces of these 3-dimensional figures are made up of different combinations of squares, rectangles and triangles.  This means students will use multiple area formulas to calculate the different areas of each face of the figure and then add them all up to find the total surface area.  

Remember, math is a cumulative subject particularly in grades 3rd-6th. Students continue to expand their knowledge of the same basic pillars each year with numbers getting larger and problems becoming longer and more complex. Reviewing skills, even at the end of the school year when your student is about to be promoted to the next grade level, is never a waste of time.

Wondering what math will look like for your student next year?  We are on it!  Stay tuned for an upcoming article this summer that will give you a look ahead into the next grade level and provide tips on what students can practice over the summer to be prepared for it.  In the meantime, you can download the FREE Grade Level Math Guides that you will need for next year.  

P.S.  May is crazy and stressful for teachers and parents, but the most fun time of the year for students!  They have worked hard this year too so try to take a deep breath and just relax and have fun with them!