Authentic Problems for 4th Grade
M4.1 – Multiply whole numbers fluently up to 3 digits by 2 digits and divide numbers up to 4 digits by 1 digit and by 10 to solve problems.(N.FL.04.10, N.FL.04.11)
1. There are 365 days in one year. How many days are in 12 years?
2. Lansing has 25 elementary schools. There are 247 students in each school. How many elementary students are there altogether in Lansing?
3. 256 students are going to the zoo. They have to be divided into groups so that each teacher has one group. There are 8 teachers. How many students will be in each group?
4. A fruit farm packs oranges in boxes that hold 10 each. One day it packs 2650 oranges. How many boxes did they use?
5. Julia has been collecting pennies since she was 3 years old. She used a machine at the bank to count her pennies. She had 4,380 pennies. How many dimes would that be?
6. Estimate the answer to 34 x 27
7. You want to give your baseball cards to your 5 best friends. You have 455 baseball cards. How many would each get, if you share them equally?
M4.2 – Solve contextual problems involving adding and subtracting fractions where one denominator is a multiple of the other. (Students can use various representations to figure these out.)
1. A cake recipe requires 1 2/3 cup of sugar for the frosting and 2/3 cup of sugar for the cake. How much sugar is that altogether?
2. 1/10 of the M&M’s in a bag are red and 1/5 are blue. What fraction of all the M&M’s are red and blue? What fraction of the M&M’s are NOT red or blue?
3. You give 1/3 of a pan of brownies to Susan and 1/6 of the pan of brownies to Patrick. How much of the pan of brownies did you give away? How much do you have left?
4. You go out for a long walk. You walk 3/4 mile and then sit down to take a rest. Then you walk 3/8 of a mile. How far did you walk altogether? (segments on a number line)
5. Pam walks 7/8 of a mile to school. Paul walks 1/2 of a mile to school. How much farther does Pam walk than Paul? (segments on a number line)
6. A school wants to make a new playground by cleaning up an abandoned lot that is shaped like a rectangle. They give the job of planning the playground to a group of students. The students decide to use 1/4 of the playground for a basketball court and 3/8 of the playground for a soccer field. How much is left for the swings and play equipment? Draw a picture to show this.
M4.3 – Add and subtract decimals through hundredths.
1. John needs $2.50. He has $0.75. How much more money does he need?
2. A swimmer is in a 100 meter race. She swims the first half of the race in 32.34 seconds and the last half of the race in 34.83 seconds. How long did it take her to swim the whole race?
3. John walks 0.7 miles to school and Nina walks 0.4 miles to school. How much farther does John walk than Nina?
4. One pencil weighs 28.3 grams. How much do 5 pencils weigh?
M4.4 – Understand and solve problems involving perimeter, area and surface area of basic geometric shapes.
1. A sandbox for the playground was built from wood boards, in the shape of a rectangle. It has sides of 10 feet and 12 feet. What total length of boards was needed to build the sandbox?
2. The playground planning committee needs to order sand for the sandbox. Sand comes in bags. Each bag covers 2 square feet of the sandbox. Find the area of the sandbox and then determine how many bags of sand are needed.
3. A house and garage are in the shape of a rectangle and a square. Find the total floor area of the house and garage.
4. A present is wrapped in a box like the one below. How much paper is needed to wrap it, in square inches? The box is 14 inches long, 8 inches wide and 7 inches high.
M4.6 – Use bar graphs and find the median and range of a set of data.
1. During July, the third and fourth graders kept track of the number of minutes they read each week. Use this graph to figure out how many minutes total the third graders read in July.