Fort Zumwalt Rock CreekElementary School

Math instruction for today’s world may tend to baffle many as we learned the process of math in such a different method. Parents can help their students by deepening their understanding of how math is currently being taught. View the video on the right for more explanation. 

Beginning in 2nd grade, students begin to develop their foundational understanding of multiplication.  Through the remainder of the elementary school years, students continue to build their understanding of multiplication, learning how to visually represent multiplication, using efficient and effective stratgies, and the relationship with division.  View the video on the right see how students make connections with mulitplication.  

Bar Models: Do you struggle with understanding or solving word problems?
If so, you are not alone. Our teachers instruct students to use visual representations to model the problem. Rectangular "bars" are used to represent numerical relationships between the known and unknown quantities and to solve the problem. The use of bar models is introduced in 2nd grade and is used throughout the remaining elementary years as a tool to assist students in visualizing the problem. Each grade level addresses distinct operations and number relationships? addition and subtraction in second grade, multiplication and division in third, fractions and ratios in fourth and fifth? so students can visualize and solve increasingly complex problems.  As the process of bar modeling is so different than the way we were taught, we are sharing a video on the right with you. This is being presented by Andy Clark, a consulting author for Math in Focus - our current math series.  Information from Math in Focus: Singapore Math: AVisual Approach to Word Problems. 

For more information on bar models, click HERE.