Week 4: Report and Reflection

Week 4's class consisted of the basic understanding of fractions and ways we can implement activities and strategies into teaching fractions.

First things first, a couple of things I learned about how to describe fractions:

• Fractions describe relationships between a part (the numerator) and a whole (the denominator)
• Although there are two numbers we have to think of them as one idea, and the relationship between the two numbers 
• Fractions can be used to represent parts of a region, parts of measurement, parts of a set or group, and division and ratios 
• Fractions have different meanings and we should be able to put these meanings together to compare their equivalency

Dylan began the class with his learning activity presentation, which I think set the bar high for the rest of us. He was confident and well spoken in his presentation and also provided interesting activities, and provided us with a very visually appealing handout with some colourful examples on it, which helped with engagement. An activity of his I especially liked was the grid he provided in his hand out for us to use the pattern blocks on. This allows us to visually compare the shapes to uncover the fractions. 

Comparing Equivalent Fractions: Yellow is 1 Whole : Red in Halves : Blue in Thirds

Anjali had great insight on how we can use patterns when we add and subtract fractions with different denominators. Something I was so nervous and unconfident about I now feel like I am slowly getting a grasp of. So thank you for that Anjali!

Mariska provided the class with an activity for teaching decimals and how we could relate that to fractions. She related her activity back into the strands of the curriculum for grades 4 and 5, which was a great reminder to us that we should not only be collecting these activities, but comparing them to the curriculum and what age groups they are appropriate for as well. Her activity was a useful one for those seeking to teach cross curricular, by adding some visual arts into the lesson! (I know Tim is reading this and thinking typical arts major...) Anyways... This is my weird looking heart that I made:

It is 32/100 squares or 32 hundredths.... or 16/50 .... or 8/25 ..... which divided equals 0.32..... Wow math is cool.

In conclusion, activities with manipulatives are great for teaching fractions since we use fractions to relate to real world situations, such as who ate more pizza than who, and helps us to make sense of it. 

Something I want to think about more is how the teacher differs from a mathematician, how teachers deconstruct and unpack the big ideas of the problems, lend an experience to them, and then reconstruct them. 

http://cliparts.co/pizza-pictures-cartoon