4th-Grade Math Assignment
Overview
Fourth-grade students solve 10 word problems involving all four operations. This assignment is weak because the problems are most closely aligned with first-grade and third-grade standards.
Why is this assignment weakly aligned?
Focus
This assignment is most closely aligned with first-grade standard 1.OA.A.1 (solving addition and subtraction word problems within 20) and third-grade standard 3.OA.A.3 (solving multiplication and division word problems within 100). In fourth grade, students should be solving multistep word problems involving all four operations (standard 4.OA.A.3), but none of the problems in this assignment are multistep.
Coherence
Though the fourth-grade standard 4.OA.A.3 does not specify what types of numbers students should be working with, the major work of fourth grade includes fluently adding and subtracting multi-digit numbers using the standard algorithm (standard 4.NBT.B.4), multiplying one-digit numbers by up to four-digit numbers and two-digit numbers by two-digit numbers (standard 4.NBT.B.5), and dividing with one-digit divisors and up to four-digit dividends, including quotients with remainders (standard 4.NBT.B.6). None of the problems in this assignment involved the number types outlined in these fourth-grade standards.
Practice Standards
This assignment allows students to engage with Mathematical Practice Standard #1 ("Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them") by interpreting what operation was needed to solve each word problem. However, the level of interpretation was far below grade level, as standard 4.OA.A.3 requires multistep word problems involving all four operations and this assignment only included one-step word problems involving one operation.