Whenever I have connected math to the real world, I’ve seen a boost in achievement in my classroom. Fractions are REALLY important concepts that must be connected to student’s lives. When I first started teaching, I would just plod along in the book. I would hand out worksheets with rectangle boxes that students would just fill in. They’d write the numbers without really connecting it to much of anything. It was kind of a disaster!
Now, I love to collect real world examples, and put them on an anchor chart. Because fractions are so abstract, we put this anchor chart together after brainstorming with a partner first:
On the student planner that day, I put an assignment to look for things that come in halves or quarters at home as well. We can always add more! Now, each time we talk about a fraction, we try to picture something from this list.
I am hoping that these concrete examples will really help them understand when I move them into representational symbols and numbers.
What a great idea for an anchor chart! We start fractions tomorrow and I’ll definitely be doing this sometime this week… perfect timing! Thanks for sharing!
LikeLike
I love this idea! I am going to do it tomorrow with my third graders. We have been working on fractions for about a week and a half and really building their understanding from the ground up!
LikeLike
[…] far at this point, we had examined the definition of a fraction, and thought about things that come in halves and quarters. It was time to move into some more new vocabulary, the numerator and denominator of a […]
LikeLike