Fractions and Play

I found myself planning another pizza fraction problem when it dawned on me that kids don't just eat pizza. Fractions play a part in many different aspects of our lives. So instead of coming up with another pizza or biscuit sharing activity, I decided to bring in water with cups and bottles, different fake foods, paper, lego, and blocks and let the kids explore.

I asked my students to show me their understanding of 'a whole'.

I wanted them to show me different examples of 'a whole'. e.g A whole piece of paper, a whole bunch of bananas, a whole cup of water.

I also asked them to show me how different parts can make a whole. 1/2 + 1/2 = 1 whole, 5 bananas make the whole bunch, 5 cups of water fill the whole water bottle etc.

I basically wanted them to show me their understanding of the central idea.

Fractions are a ways of representing whole-part relationships.

Students playing with making different fraction amounts.

Cutting up a whole piece of paper into different parts.

Creating a whole soccer team, two whole teams, half of the field, talking about half time.

Students playing with creating a whole box of bagels, making a whole ham burger, a whole much of bananas.

What fraction of the food is meat?

Creating different fraction amount with cups of water. 

This student was showing me that 1/2 + 1/2 = 1 whole. She then asked what if we use 'x' (multiplication)? This really intrigued her and she went to ask another student.  He shrugged! I wrote this on the board to reflect on in our next lesson. A hard concept to understand (I must admit I had to google it!), but it reinforces what can happen when you let kids inquire and explore in maths.

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 .