Introducing Fractions

Today I introduced our new central idea for our Proportion and Ratio Unit. 

First, I asked kids to read and discuss what they thought were the KEY words from within the CI. Then, on post it notes, I got my students to write down what they knew about fractions. 

Some kids could recall prior knowledge from previous Grade 1. 

Other students were open enough to admit that they don't know... yet. So pleasing to see growth mindset developing in the way they think about maths.

I then showed them this video I made using Lego Movie as a provocation. I wanted to see if this would give me more insight into the students prior knowledge. 

I asked them to answer these questions:

1. What are the problems the gorilla and the monkey face?

2. How would they solve the problems?

There responses to this showed me that some students already have a good understanding about the concept of equal sharing and knowledge of using vocabulary such as half or thirds to represent whole -part amounts.

Most could write the symbols, but some had difficulty using fractions to represent the correct amount. e.g. 3/1 is half a cake.

Interestingly, some students who said that they didn't know anything about fractions, were able to solve this problem.

This always reminds me of the importance of formative assessment and getting students to share their initial understandings .