Fractions and Decimals! (week 4)

I will ensure that my students have a conceptual understanding of fractions and decimals by displaying to them the basic concept of both terms before elaborating on those concepts. I think that most confusion can stem from not having an understanding of why those numbers are in the place value they are, as well as what it means to switch fraction to a decimal and vice versa.

The most basic part of understanding fractions is realizing what the numbers mean and what they actually represent. I will work to show my students that through interactive conversations and examples. The textbook provided some great activities involving games and creativity that I would consider using. The pizza game we played in class, where we all started with a number and that number had a portion of the pizza such as 3/4ths of a pizza, and that had to be compared to everyone else’s number even though they had different denominators, showed us the importance of having the same denominator to compare fractions. I would definitely want to try to do something like that to start off my students, to make sure that they fully grasped the concept of fractions. 

As far as decimals, I find the place value charts to be the most effective for me so far, so I would first try that with my students. Placing the decimal into a chart and demonstrating the movement of the number while having the title of “tenth” or “ones” columns was very helpful to my understanding. I think that creating a place value chart would be the first place to start with students. I have done this with the grade three students I work with, and they use a thing called a “place value house” and act as though the columns are neighbours and when they have to borrow it is the neighbour knocking on the door asking to borrow some eggs. This was a good technique because it reminded the kids of the values in the columns. 

I also really enjoyed Nicolina's example of having to match the fraction to the decimal. It was very similar to this online game, that I found when I was looking up fractions and decimals.  The matching game of having a mixture of fractions and decimals and having to match the equivalent fraction to its decimal was a quick, fun way to practice conversion skills.

Fraction Pizza. Clipart Kids. (2016). Accessed through : http://www.clipartkid.com/pizza-fraction-cliparts/

In my placement, I have yet to see the students work on fractions. They were working on scatter plot graphs when I went in last time, and it was really interesting to see them work through the problems. I started with some questions that were actually kind of hard to answer, luckily after talking it through, my memory was jogged to remember how to create the algebraic expression and keep the y axis the same while changing the steepness of the slope. I cannot wait to find out some more techniques that I can use in the classroom. I have tried to implement a few so far, such as encouraging students to work through the problem in pairs. I have found that this math course is really helping me in my placement since they do math the first two periods I am there.