Units and Big Ideas in Grade 4 of InsightMath Texas
Unit 0 (Doing Mathematics) sets the foundation for this course by establishing routines, process skills, and mindsets essential for success in learning mathematics.
Students enter grade 4 with an existing schema of multiplication as the mathematics of equal groups. They extend that schema in Unit 1 (Exploring Multiplicative Relationships) to generate a more robust concept of multiplicative relationships as they explore factors, multiples, and input-output tables. They begin to explore division situations with remainders and interpret remainders in context. Unit 2 (Discovering Multiplicative Comparison) extends students’ multiplication schemas further to include situations involving multiplicative comparison. Students develop their language skills related to these situations, and apply understanding of multiplicative relationships to convert between customary units of measurement.
In Unit 3 (Extending Place Value and Adding and Subtracting Efficiently), students generalize place value reasoning, making use of periodicity to work with numbers up to one billion. They describe place value relationships as multiplicative comparisons and use place value reasoning to compare, add, and subtract multidigit numbers. In Units 4 (Extending Multiplication to Multidigit Whole Numbers) and 5 (Building Division Strategies), students connect place value reasoning to their understanding of factors and multiples to generalize multiplication and division strategies.
The next pair of units focus on fractions. Students begin Unit 7 (Extending Addition and Subtraction to Fractions) by extending their fraction schema to include numbers greater than 1, and to express them in different but equivalent ways including fractions, whole numbers, and mixed numbers. They continue to think of unit fractions as they do other units, and build understanding that fractions can be added or subtracted when they are expressed with common unit fractions. In Unit 8 (Exploring Fraction Thinking and Discovering Decimals) extend their understanding of equivalence to represent numbers as equivalent fractions and as decimals and explore ways to generate these equivalent forms and compare numbers.
In Unit 9 (Extending Financial Literacy), students use money contexts to support understanding of addition and subtraction of decimals. They explore thinking of decimals as fractions and to extend whole number place value reasoning to decimals, and see that both of these are legitimate ways to think about adding and subtracting decimals. Students have the opportunity to further practice adding and subtracting decimals as they learn about income, expenses, saving, and borrowing.
Students examine two-dimensional shapes and the relationships among their parts in Unit 10 (Exploring Shapes, Lines, and Angles) as they extend their classification system. Unit 11 (Making Connections with Time and Data) offers students the opportunity to consolidate much of their learning as they problem solve with fractions, angles, multiples, and data representations in real-world situations.