For The Love of Fractions

When teaching students about fractions it is important to not revert back to the old methods that were taught to us in the more traditional approach such as cross-multiplication. Students have no idea why they are cross-multiplying and really do not understand fractions entirely with this approach. Instead it is crucial to provide students with good open math problems involving fractions to deepen their understanding of fractions instead of memorizing formulas. Why not simplify dividing fractions for students and let them divide the tops from the bottoms. That is what makes sense and works better for them. I feel that if a teacher in my past had told me it would be okay to divide fractions this way that I as a student would not have struggled or been as frustrated with fractions as I had been. I feel it is important to keep math simple and let the student understand the big ideas so that they can progress in their learning experience and not feel discouraged.

Parallel tasks in the classroom are essential to promote growth in a student's learning experience. Parallel tasks include more challenging or less challenging tasks where students can choose which one they may want to pursue, and then at the end the whole class can participate in a discussion. It is important to not give students generally more than three choices so they do not spend the majority of the time deciding which question to do but stay on task. Students may have off days where they do not feel as great or confident as other days and may want to pursue a less challenging task or students may want to challenge themselves further by picking a more challenging task that day. Whatever the case may be, the student can always pick a question that they can get started on and discuss with their peers.

There are fail safe strategies for creating open questions for students such as begin with the answer to a question and allow students to work on the problem to arrive at the solution. Another strategy used is asking students for similarities or to leave certain information out of the problem and allow them to fill in the blanks themselves. It is crucial to allow students to be scientists and allow them to to try methods out by trial and error. Students can compare answers to see if they are going in the right direction or what trajectory they should take. Fractions can be applied to other units taught in math and you can teach lessons that tie together themes so that students can make connections between the lessons. You might then hear a student say " Oh yeah, I've seen this before. So ratios and fractions are pretty much the same thing!"