This week students finished working on their Special Number books and had a chance to share and see how other students designed it in our gallery walk Wednesday.
On Thursday we began our new unit, entitled Bits and Pieces, working with fractions. After a pre-assessment to see what we already know about fractions, we began Investigation #1, looking at how fractions could be used to describe progress in a fundraising thermometer.
On Friday, we saw how we could divide a whole into different sized fractions by making fraction strips. Some students used different methods, from measuring with a rule, like Gabe, although most of the class decided to use folding to divide their strips into 1/2s, 1/3s, 1/4s, 1/5s, 1/6s, 1/8s, 1/9s, 1/10s, and 1/12s. While some strips were easy to create, such as 1/2, others were more challenging, like 1/3 or 1/12. Students began noticing relationships between fractions, such as if they first made the strip into thirds, then they could divide those thirds into fourths to create twelfths.
Fraction strips will be useful tools as we continue going deeper with fractions, looking at equivalent fractions, adding and subtracting fractions by giving us visual models to work from.
This weekend students are finishing their fraction strips for homework.
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