Monday - We had a great Math Talk today!! Students examined the difference between three different sized papers, all of which were folded in half. We came to the conclusion that if the whole is a different size then yes the fraction may be the same (1/2) but that the sizes of the 1/2 aren't the same. This led us to talking about the following shape: We took a piece of paper like this and divided it in half. Students all agreed that the fraction would be 1/2. I then divided the top half of the page in two and students predicted this would be 1/4. Next, I divided the bottom section in half on the diagonal, and asked students if the top 1/4 and the bottom 1/4 were the same size. WOW! The discussion this generated was quite something. As parents/guardians, what do you think? I then encouraged students to look at this through a grilled-cheese sandwich lens. If two people had the same order at Earls (a grilled cheese sandwich) and one asked for their sandwich to be cut into rectangles, and the other triangles, would both have the same total amounts of grilled cheese? The votes were tallied and student's defended their thoughts, but the idea still wasn't decided amongst all students. Thankfully, Asher let me borrow his lunch sandwich to help explain this idea further. Here is what students saw... Just like the paper, first I cut the sandwich in half. Then the bottom half I cut in half again (using a vertical line), and the top half I cut in half as well using a diagonal line. We had a serious AH - HA moment, when students realized, regardless of the shape, both halves were cut in half, making it into equal quarters...regardless of the shape!!
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**** I am working on correcting all Math Quizzes from today, and hope to return them to students tomorrow**** Monday - We started fractions today! Here is some of the work the students did. We talked about the total number of shapes in our design, and students recognized that as the denominator. We then talked about how to represent the different colors in our images in the form of a fraction. We are just in the very beginning introduction stages of our learning of fractions. Make sure to check the blog for regular fraction-learning-updates. Tuesday - we continued our introduction to Fractions today. Students are becoming familiar with the lingo used for this unit. We have spent a lot of time focusing on the idea that fractions stretch far beyond pizzas and cakes. We used our class as an example, using 31 as the whole, and creating different fractions based on what people were wearing.
Wednesday - we didn't do math today. Thursday - students created their own fractions today using two and then three different colors. We talked about the need for the parts of the whole to be the same size when drawing and then writing a fraction. For example, pies are cut into triangular pieces, all of which are the same size. If we were to cute a pie using vertical and horizontal lines, the parts of the pie would be different sizes. Some pieces may be very large, whereas others would be very small. Friday - no school |
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