ROCK

Arithmetic Grade Four

Remember that we can draw pictures of word story problems. Think about this sample word story problem:


   There were three fish bowls.
   There were six fish in each bowl.
   How many fish were there in all?

We could represent this story problem with three rows of six x's like this:


      xxxxxx
      xxxxxx
      xxxxxx

If we count up all the x's we get a total of 18 x's. This is the same as this multiplication number sentence:


    3 x 6 = 18

Here's another example:


   There were four stacks of pancakes.
   There were three pancakes in each stack.
   How many pancakes were there in all?

We could represent this story problem with four rows of three x's like this:


      
      xxx
      xxx
      xxx
      xxx

If we count up all the x's we get a total of 12 x's. This is the same as this multiplication number sentence:


    4 x 3 = 12