SAVY 2019: Session 4, Day 1 – Fractions at Work (Rising 3rd/4th)

Posted by hallep on Monday, July 8, 2019 in Grade 3, Grade 4, SAVY.

Day 1

What a great first day! Your students were ready and eager to learn today in our SAVY Fractions at Work class. We started the day by creating a model for equivalent fractions using strips of paper. Students made strips representing whole, halves, fourths, eighths, sixteenths, thirds, fifths, and more! We talked about different ways to represent the fractions and talked about how there are an infinite number of equivalencies for one half. The students really enjoyed looking at the patterns with ½, ¼, 1/8, 1/16. That led to a discussion about powers of 2 and Fibonacci sequence. They seem eager to explore more patterns this week!

Later in the day, we used our fraction knowledge to measure a frog jumping contest. We made origami frogs and measured the distance the frogs “hopped” with our fraction strips. This was great practice comparing fractions because the some of the measurements were improper fractions and mixed numbers.

We also used our fraction knowledge to make some lemonade for the class. We used a simple recipe:

1 cup lemon juice

1 cup sugar

1 ½ quarts of water

Makes 2 quarts or 8 cups

We changed the recipe to make 20 cups of lemonade. The students did a great job talking about how they manipulated the recipe to figure out the amount we would need to make sure that everyone had enough to drink. They proclaimed it was the best lemonade ever!

I’m looking forward to working with them tomorrow!