First Week Task 3

Grade 4GT
First Week Performance Tasks: Doughnut Days

 

Materials needed

• Doughnut Days power point slides
• Calculators
• Chart paper- approximately 3 sheets per group
• Markers

Task description

This task gives students an opportunity to demonstrate their level of proficiency with multiplying and/or dividing in a problem situation, as well as their ability to reason abstractly and quantitatively when problem solving. Students will describe attributes of rows and columns in relationship to multiplication.

Task directions

1. Number Routine (10 minutes): Picture It
2.   Problem Solving – in Groups (35 minutes)
   • Use the power point slides for Doughnut Days.
   • Allow students to work in groups of 3 ( 3 is optimal, 2 if necessary, never more than 4) to solve the problem.
   • As students are solving the problem, take observation notes on the checklist provided on what strategies are being used and the SMPs that the students are demonstrating.
3. Once students finish solving the task, have groups share. (15 minutes)
   • Discuss student ideas and strategies as a whole group.
   • Remind students that there may be many ways to find a solution to these tasks.
   • Ask students to share strategies and solutions. Lead the discussion by asking other students if they agree or disagree with the other groups’ findings.  Ask the groups to explain/justify their answers verbally. 

4. Closure: Ask students to share the SMPs their group demonstrated while solving this problem.

Suggested questions 

• How did you get that answer?
• If you are stuck, what do you know so far?
• Is there another way to represent that answer?
• Could you solve the problem a different way?
• Is your answer reasonable? How do you know?
• What do you notice about the size of the large and small paper clip?
• Did solving one task help you with a different task?

Task guidance

Teacher should:	Teacher should avoid:	Anticipated strategies:
ask students general questions about how they came up with a given answer ask questions of different students in each group after a student shares his or her thinking, ask other students in the group, “Do you agree with _____’s reasoning?” or “Did anyone think about this in a different way?” if the students are stuck on a certain part of the task or having trouble explaining their reasoning, say, “Why don’t you and your teammates discuss [this part of the task]. I’ll go talk with the other groups and come back in a few minutes and we can continue our discussion.” ask students about correct and incorrect answers, not just ones that are incorrect or unreasonable answers circulate among the groups and try to interact with as many different students as possible if students are unable to explain or think through a given idea, encourage them to move on to another part of the task rather than trying to lead the students to a correct answer and/or strategy.	explain how to determine rows and columns tell a student if their answer is correct or not react in a way that shows students if they are correct or not	Use of standard algorithm for multiplication/division Creation of a rule in the form of an expression Modeling multiplication with an array

Task resources

• Doughnut Days power point slides Download Doughnut Days power point slides
• Observation checklist Download Observation checklist
• Full teacher directions Download Full teacher directions
  
   

Standard

4.OA.2 - Multiply or divide to solve word problems involving multiplicative comparison, (e.g., by using drawings and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem, distinguishing multiplicative comparison from additive comparison).