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| Diving fractions...without the flip! |
This week in math class
we were yet again blown away by Patricia by turning flipping fractions and
dividing a thing of the past. Our opening activity falls into the category of
physical activity which is one of my favourite cross-curriculum subjects to
incorporate into the classroom. The concept of the activity incorporating
fractions could help students understand the difference between a variety of
fractions and the values that each fraction has. It started as a wide base
activity that got students to first work individually and then with elbow
partners/group and then gave the options for students to use any method that
got them to best visualize the people in the activity and the distance to the
teacher. This activity has definitely been added to the mathematics toolbox of
resources.
In addition to the
opening activity dividing fractions have been made easy with finding common denominators.
Having students know their multiplication time tables is important to help them
grasp concepts of finding common denominators. I myself still have a hard time
flipping fractions and divide with the new equation so learning this algorithm
will help in my understanding process. I felt accomplished this past week in
math, a lot of that is because I understood and did not get frustrated with
learning fractions. The concept of universal design is important for us
educators, I think it is important to design a problem that is both universal
and connected to real-life to help students become more engaged with the
problem and more inclined to ask questions and come up with solutions. This could also turn into a positive way to
get students more engaged by thinking of questions, and start to think outside
of just solving questions but how to formulate the start of questions
themselves.
The strategies for
creating open questions are a great tool that we teachers can add and consider
when teaching our own classrooms. There insight from these strategies will help
us create sound lesson plans similar to how we are learning in mathematics with
Patricia.
Hey Patricia,
ReplyDeleteGreat post, especially the title where you mentioned making flipping the thing of the past. I feel very fortunate to learn these methods of teaching math. I know that the way we learned could have confused many students in math and their confusion became road blocks that prevented them from learning and enjoying math. Hopefully these techniques can help us to be better math teachers and encourage students to believe that math is fun.
Also interesting point about universal design, where we as future teachers can use various techniques to design problems that are relatable and engage all kinds of learners.
I too was very surprised about flipping fractions a concept of the past. I learned this method way back in the day and I even taught it to many students in my previous jobs; to learn that there is another way of solving fractions is mind blowing. I've come to learn that all the formulas and rules that we have learned in the past are just simplified ways of doing math. According to Pat, rules were made for machines not children.
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