Satisfaction With Fractions Pt. 2

   We are approaching week 6 in Math class and this week we finished up working with fractions using division. We began the class with an exercise of Red Light, Green Light. This game had students engage in the activity where the goal of the game is to get from one end of the playing area to the other, as the teacher says “red light” to stop and “green light” to go. Afterwards, we worked with a problem that had examples of the student’s final placement in the game, which was represented by a fraction. For example: Kevin finished 8/9, Kelly finished 5/6, and Lianne ¾, etc. Students were then asked to organize the fractions in order. This activity was great because it was fun and interactive. It allowed students to participate, regardless of their math comprehension level and there were many different ways that students could approach this problem. As teachers, we must teach our students the big ideas about fractions. We have provide students with the basic techniques so that they are able to recognize what a fraction is. A fraction is formed by splitting a whole into any number of pieces of equal size. They should be able to recognize that factions and ratios are the same and that whole numbers are not fractions. A big part of learning fractions is recognizing and differentiating “what is” and “what is not” considered a fraction. Once students have these foundations, it makes it much easier for them to begin adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing fractions.

 In class we also had a word problem that revolved around a story where a man named Mr .Tan had a very important porcelain artifact. He accidentally dropped this artifact and it broke in seven pieces. He noticed that the pieces had broken in different shapes and sizes and wonder if he could put this artifact back together. As a class, we were given the task to help Mr. Tan put his artifact back together using similarly shaped tangram pieces. We had to find a way to put our seven pieces back together in a square as displayed in the image below. Then as a class we tried to estimate what faction of each shape, fit into the square.

 I really enjoyed this activity and thought that it was a great way for students to get involved with thinking about fractions. When I was a student I would have really appreciated working on a word problem like this because it was something that was fun, interactive, and included a mixture of storytelling and hands-on activity, where everyone can get involved. Also, working with tangrams is always appealing to students because they are fun and they allow students to visually see the size of the shapes, so that they can explore many different ways to repair their square artifact. Even if the student cannot repair their square using the tangrams, they can still see the size of the shapes and this could help them determine the potential fraction that each shape represents to make the entire square.