Justin McEntire, Aaron Hardrick, Merary Garcia

The fourth grade math book published by Mcgraw Hill briefly covered perimeter,

circumference, area, volume congruency, transformations, and symmetry. The book extensively

covered finding areas and perimeters of abnormal shapes given certain side lengths. While most

of the topics were both simple and logically ordered, a few of the problems would have given a

typical 9 year old trouble. For instance, in one problem a child was required to find the perimeter

of a non-typical shape, with certain sides missing. Overall I do not believe anything was really

missing, only the opportunity to add significant challenges to the texts. As it stands, most of the

problems were likely too simple given the subject matter.

One thing that the text did cover well was area of a rectangular shape. In the text they showed

how to break a shape into smaller squares in order to find the area of the given shape. For

example, in one we were told to find the area of a swimming pool that was in an L shape. The

final answer was derived by breaking it into both a 4x4 and 4x8 rectangle and adding the two

areas. Graph paper was used throughout the chapter which was a strength for enhancing the

students understanding of the subject matter. One thing that the book underplayed was the usage

of square segments. It simply told students to use square cm, in, etcetera, but the text never

explained why or how they came to use square units. This is a topic a teacher will later have to

go back and explain, thus wasting plenty of time.

Another subject that the text brought up was measuring both circumference and diameter. In

the chapter they initially used a piece of string to measure the circumference of a soup can, and

later they used a ruler to find the diameter of a CD. While the physical examples are wonderful, I

cannot help but feel as though the author cut the lesson short. There was no mention of Pi or a

radius, and therefor there was no mention of how to find these quantities without physical means.
I believe that in the 4th grade a student should be fully capable of both finding and using

formulas to find simple circumferences without using physical objects.