As we got into it, one of the things that seemed tricky for my students was teaching fractions greater than one (whole). We conquered this by using pizzas and pies as our examples. I love to tell stories, so I usually tell a loooooooong story about my family coming over for pizza. I pretend that my students are my family and I ask them what kind of pizza they like and how many slices they would eat. As I go from person to person, I illustrate their pizza slices on the board. Once I fill up one pizza, I pretend to panic and ask my students what I should do next? How will we ever feed my sister her 5 slices of pepperoni?! The kids giggle and then start yelling out suggestions. Eventually I agree with them, that I'll have to order more than one pizza. It is important to go through this process so that even my most struggling learners can see that they have "eaten" fractions at their own house, with their own families. EVERYONE has had times where they have ordered more than one pizza!

I decided that I could use her materials (because they are awesome) and just take it to the next level! My students each made 2 pizzas. They could choose how many slices they wanted to have on their pizzas (I copied a certain number of each type (halves, thirds, fourths, sixths, and eighths) so that my groups would be even later. Students could pick any combinations of toppings, but the rule was each slice could only have one topping on it. Once they completed their pizzas, they worked within groups determined by how many slices were on their pizzas (halves, thirds, fourths, sixths, and eighths).
First they had to tally all the slices and toppings. So as a group they had to look at how many pepperoni slices the whole group had, how many onion slices, how many pepper, and so on. Once they came up with their tallies, they had to put these numbers into fraction form. The important thing was the use of improper fractions.
Once the groups were done, they were sharing their number line and using "math talk" unprompted to describe how much of each type they had, which ones were greater than one whole, which topping had the most, and which had the least. The numberlines and the pizzas made a very cute math bulletin board! I plan on doing this activity from now on. It was a hit!
~Heather
Great post,, and so helpful
ReplyDeleteI love any activity where my kids work together. Who doesn't love pizza?!
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