It's not every day that I come home and am dying to tell Mr. Lafferty about a lesson that I taught at school. Since we are BOTH teachers, we try not to let school dominate our conversations in the evening, but today I couldn't help it. :)
We have been deep into fractions during the month of January. (I guess if we aren't going to be buried deep in the snow, we might as well be deep into fractions. ha!) Today's activity was a review of what we have been learning about number lines and their relation to fractions.
We started out our math time with a whole group review of how a fraction is greater than zero and less than one. We worked together to figure out how to divide our number lines on the board into 1/2. 1/3, and 1/6, and 1/12. We even had a great conversation about equivalent fractions!
Next, we divided up into groups of 3. I gave each group a large piece of colored paper that had 4 number lines drawn on it. Each group had the challenge of dividing their 4 number lines by 4 different fractions. This was a great way to review that the denominator (the number on da-bottom) is the number that tells us how many parts to make. (see example of how we record our math vocabulary over here..................................................)Each group had a strip of paper that they could fold into halves, fourths, thirds and sixths to help them measure equal parts.
After everyone had finished writing their fractions on their number lines, we did a walk around to compare each group's work. Students were to look for similarities and differences in how each group made their number line.
We took a brain break and went to RECESS (yay for a warm, sunny 70 degree afternoon in January! Craziness, but I'll take it.) When we returned, we spent some time reflecting on how our activity had gone. I asked everyone to respond in their math notebook to these two questions:
1. What was the hardest part about placing fractions on a number line? Why?
2. If I gave you the fraction 1/5, how would you divide your number line? Draw it and write about it. I was so proud of everyone and all their hard work today! There was some serious brain sweating going on in our room. But, like Kim Sutton says, "Wrestling with math is like sweating in basketball. It means you are in the game." Today, we were in the GAME!
A close up of some finished work.
Oh. If your student came home talking about mosquitoes exploding from tabasco sauce, a guy getting super excited about his graduation gift, and a dog that ate a bird, that is a whole other topic for another post. lol! We had quite the exciting morning inferring with commercials....!
Happy Reading,
Mrs. Lafferty
