Understanding the Ontario Grade 4 math curriculum

Grade 4 is a turning point in math. Your child moves from the primary grades into the junior grades, numbers get bigger, decimals appear for the first time, and multiplication facts go from “learning them” to “knowing them”. If homework suddenly looks harder, that’s why.

This guide walks through what the Ontario curriculum expects in Grade 4, in plain language, so you know what your child is working on and how to help. For the full list of expectations, with examples and hints, see our Grade 4 math guide.

The curriculum at a glance

Elementary math in Ontario follows The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 1–8: Mathematics, released by the Ontario Ministry of Education in 2020. It’s organised into six strands:

Strand	What it covers in Grade 4
A. Social-Emotional Learning Skills and the Mathematical Processes	How kids approach math: persevering, managing frustration, explaining their thinking
B. Number	Numbers to 10 000, fractions, decimal tenths, and the four operations
C. Algebra	Patterns, equations and inequalities, coding, and math modelling
D. Data	Collecting and graphing data, mean, median and mode, and probability
E. Spatial Sense	Geometry, coordinates, transformations, and measurement
F. Financial Literacy	Ways to pay, making change, spending and saving

Each strand has overall expectations (the big goals) and specific expectations (the detailed skills), each with a code like B2.2. Strand A doesn’t have its own specific expectations; it’s meant to be part of everything else.

What’s new in Grade 4

Compared with Grade 3, these are the biggest jumps.

Bigger numbers and decimals

In Grade 3, whole numbers go up to 1000. In Grade 4 they go up to 10 000, and kids round to the nearest ten, hundred or thousand. They also meet decimal tenths for the first time and learn that 0.7 and 7/10 are two ways of writing the same amount. Fractions go from halves to tenths, and kids count by fractions (for example, by quarters up to 10).

Multiplication facts to 10 × 10

The Grade 4 curriculum expects students to recall multiplication facts from 1 × 1 to 10 × 10, and the related division facts. In Grade 3 the expectation covers the facts for 2, 5 and 10. This is one of the places where a little regular practice at home pays off the most.

Multiplying and dividing bigger numbers

Kids multiply two- and three-digit numbers by one-digit numbers (like 324 × 3), multiply by 10, 100 and 1000, and divide two- and three-digit numbers by one-digit numbers. Remainders can be written as fractions when that makes sense. For example, 75 stickers shared among 4 friends is 18 and 3/4 each if you can cut stickers, or 18 each with 3 left over if you can’t.

Equations and inequalities

Grade 4 students use symbols as variables and solve equations with whole numbers up to 50 (like 3 × n = 24). They also solve simple inequalities (like x + 6 < 10), then check and graph the solutions.

Coding with nested events

Coding has been part of Ontario math since the 2020 curriculum. In Grade 4, students write and change code that includes nested events, such as a loop inside another loop, to solve math problems.

Data: stem-and-leaf plots and the median

Kids learn the difference between qualitative data (like favourite sport) and quantitative data (like number of goals), organise data in frequency tables and stem-and-leaf plots, choose the best graph (including multiple-bar graphs), and make an infographic. They find the mean, median and mode. Probability goes on a line from “impossible” to “certain”.

Geometry and measurement

Grade 4 geometry focuses on rectangles: right angles, parallel and perpendicular sides, and lines of symmetry. Kids plot points on a coordinate grid (the first quadrant), slide and flip shapes, and classify angles as right, straight, acute or obtuse. In measurement they work with grams and kilograms, litres and millilitres, metric prefixes, elapsed time, and the area of a rectangle as length × width.

Financial literacy

Money gets more grown-up. Kids identify different ways to pay (cash, debit, credit and more), calculate the total and the change for several items (without sales tax), and explain spending, saving, earning, investing and donating. They also talk about how to tell whether something is a good price.

What Grade 4 homework looks like

Expect a mix of:

• Fact practice, like a sheet of multiplication facts to 10 × 10.
• Multi-step word problems, such as working out the total cost of two items and then the change from a $20 bill.
• “Show your thinking” questions, where the method matters as much as the answer. Your child might be asked to use an array, a number line or a drawing.
• Data activities, like surveying the family and making a graph.
• Measurement tasks, like working out how long a movie is from its start and end times.

How to help at home

You don’t need to reteach the curriculum. These habits help most:

1. Practise facts little and often. Five minutes a day beats an hour on Sunday. Games, flash cards and quick quizzes in the car all count.
2. Connect decimals to real life. Money and measuring are full of tenths: $0.50, 1.5 L, 0.5 km.
3. Ask “how did you get that?” Explaining a method builds understanding, and Ontario classrooms expect it.
4. Let them use their classroom strategies. If the homework asks for an array or the area model, don’t switch them to the method you learned. Ask them to show you theirs.
5. Estimate first. “About how big should the answer be?” catches a lot of mistakes.
6. Keep it calm. Frustration shuts learning down. Take a break when it builds, and come back to the hard question later.

For more ideas, read how to help with math homework without giving the answer.

Where Astuzo fits in

Astuzo is a homework tutor app built on the Ontario math curriculum for Grades 3 to 6. In Grade 4, your child can snap a whole sheet of multiplication facts and have it checked at once, or work through a multi-step word problem with hints from Spark, our friendly robot tutor, who asks what’s known, what’s asked, and what to try first, without giving away the answer. You get a report after every session.

Astuzo is in pilot now. Join the waitlist to hear when it’s ready, and see the full Grade 4 math guide for every expectation in plain language.

Source: The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 1–8: Mathematics (2020), Ontario Ministry of Education. Astuzo is not affiliated with the Ministry.