Fraction Boot Camp Day 1

I’m helping out for a few days with a GLS class who are working on deepening their fractions understanding and skills. Our goal is to use as many different concrete representations as we can.

We started off by creating unit fractions, by folding various strips of paper into equal sized pieces. We had some challenges with the 1/3, 1/5 and 1/10.

We noticed that the more folds made, the smaller the segments. That means that the bigger the denominator the smaller the unit fraction.

We noticed that there were a few ways to make 1/2. We can say that 3/6, or 2/4 or 4/8 or 5/10 all equal 1/2.

Our next job was to put these unit fractions on a number line. We could use the folded pieces as a ruler to help us out.

Our next challenge was to use the digits 0,1,2,3,4,5 as numerators for fractions with denominators of 2,3,4,6,8, and to create fractions to add to the number line.

We noticed that if you make fractions that have the same numerator and denominator the fraction simplifies to 1. We know 3/3 and 4/4 are equal to 1 and easy to put on our number line. We also know that if the numerator is 0 the fraction simplifies to 0.

We used pattern blocks to represent fractions as well. We know that 1 hexagon can be created using 1 red block and 3 green blocks. Each red block is 1/2 a hexagon and each green block is 1/6th of a hexagon. We can write that 1=1/2+1/6+1/6+1/6

Tomorrow we will use a few new tools to represent and compare fractions.