Just a quick little update…it’s been hard to blog because we have hardly been in school! Today is day THREE of being off after our brief 2 day return!
One of the things we DID accomplish in our time back after break was our introduction to addition and subtraction with fractions. I thought our new series presented it in a rather interesting way, so I tweaked it a little (knowing my class and their….ummmm…focus challenges)
In a nutshell, I asked the students (in trios) to fold 4 pieces of paper into eighths. I told them I didn’t care HOW they divided them into eighths–but asked that they do it the same way for each piece–and that they do it in less than three minutes. I then asked them to come back and we talked about how they accomplished the task.
I then sent them back to shade the following fractions on their pages–each sheet representing a different fraction–1/8, 2/8, 3/8, and 5/8. Again, I gave the team 3 minutes to accomplish the goal. We then talked about how it didn’t matter WHICH of the sections were colored…just that the fraction was represented (ex. 3 out of the 8). Both of these mini-tasks were a great review from winter break.
I then talked to them about counting by unit fractions…also review. We did some counting together—1/5, 2/5, 3/5 and so on. I then asked what would happen to each of their folded papers if they counted up 1 more eighth. I showed a sample and we worked as a class to model it with 3/8.