Brittany Basile EDEL 433 Whole Group Activity

For my whole group lesson I introduced the concept of fractions to the students. I started with the vocabulary before jumping into the lesson. I wrote the word FRACTION on the board and asked who could tell me what they thought this word meant. Because the teacher had just gone over naming of equal parts (halves, thirds, fourths, fifths etc...) the students responded with things like A fraction is all different kinds of shapes or A fraction has all different numbers. I accepted all of these answers because they all had some truth to them. I wrote that a fraction is part of a whole and then had the students all read it together aloud. I then went over the terms numerator, denominator and fraction bar and had the students repeat it to me. After vocabulary, I had a student helper pass out the baggies that I brought in which contained one whole graham cracker and one graham cracker that was broken down into 4 individual squares. I first modeled what the students would be doing by showing them that the whole graham cracker represents the whole number which is the denominator and that when I put 3 graham crackers on top of the whole, it represents the number of parts which is also called the numerator. I then wrote on the board the fraction that the graham crackers represented which was 3/4. I then instructed the students to take their graham crackers out of the bag so we could try some fractions together. I would say the fraction 1/4 and they would

Brittany Basile EDEL 433 Whole Group Activity

have to show me with their graham crackers by stacking the 1 graham cracker on top of the whole 4. We practiced with this for about 5-7 minutes and then moved on to more fraction fun. For the next half of my lesson, I put up pictures of different shapes that were drawn on a overhead slide (the teacher let me use one that had already made). I put the pictures up one by one using the elmo and zooming in to the pictures so the students could easily identify the number of parts in the whole. They were then instructed to belly write the fraction on their whiteboard and label which part of the fraction was the numerator and which was the denominator. I walked around and checked their answers and they all were doing so well. I gave students a double-high five each time they got the right answer. I encouraged them to try drawing the fraction using a different shape if they finished early. Students loved when I gave them challenge problems using higher level fractions to draw pictures of like 8/15. They all did so well and I felt so good after teaching this whole group lesson!