Getting to Know Fractions
I am by no means a remote learning expert. My experience comes from Spring of 2020, where I spent a couple of months helping my daughter while she was learning from home. During that time, I noticed a few things - my daughter was much more engaged when she had choices in what she was going to do and activities that we could complete together that let her use her imagination (games, crafts, baking etc..). I also noticed that everything seemed to take so much longer than I would have expected it to take in the classroom - playing school at home was taking up a large portion of our day.
Rapke & Ippolito (2020) suggest three questions that teachers should ask themselves when creating home-based learning activities for their students.
Can the activity be easily done in a home setting, and is curriculum being used in a flexible way that fits with family activities/interests or things that families might already be doing?
Is there a focus on literacy and math?
Are the activities taking up a major portion of the day?
With my own experiences and the above three questions in mind, I created a choice board that explores fractions as a way to supplement whole-class math instruction for a student who I support that is currently learning from home. I wanted to provide interactive and hands-on opportunities that explore fractions in the world around us and that did not rely on completing multiple worksheets.
All of the activities were selected to be easily done at home - they are flexible and include activities that the family may already be doing: cooking together, crafts, games etc...
The activities focus on literacy and math - they provide opportunities for conversations that use math language and includes a picture book that explores math concepts. Cutting (2019) suggests that when introducing fractions, fractions should be explored as measure, ratio, and operator, and that partitioning into equal sizes or fair shares is critical in developing rational number sense. The choice board includes tasks that use fractions as measurements, and many opportunities to practice partitioning. Exploring fractions as ratios and operators may be an area to extend into later on.
Being cognizant of the amount of time recommended for students to be engaged in home learning activities each day, I have suggested that only one activity be selected a day. In the original document all of the blue, under-lined text are links either to resources, videos or examples to support the activity.
References
Cutting, C. (2019). Re-thinking fraction instruction in primary school: The case for an alternative approach in the early years. Mathematics Education Research Group of Australia. https://eric.ed.gov/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED604346
Rapke, T., & Ippolito, J. (2020, June 16). How can parents and teachers support elementary students as they learn from home during Covid-19. EdCan Network. https://www.edcan.ca/articles/waw-learning-from-home/
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