On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 4:23 AM, Steve Thomas said: > Special bonus points for anyone who can come up with an example of division > with fractions (ex: 1/3 divided by 1/2)
I found a couple of promising lesson plans with a web search: http://mypages.iit.edu/~smile/ma9703.html http://mypages.iit.edu/~smile/ma8805.html If your students are familiar with cuisenaire rods, a little coaching should help them to develop demonstrations or calculation methods with the rods. Also, how about pouring a liter a water into cups marked with a fill line at two-tenths of a liter. (two-tenths is one fifth, the student fills five cups, so the reciprocal of one fifth is five.) And so on with two liters, then half a liter ... Above present division as "quotition" (how many times x goes into z) "Partition" (sharing z equally among y groups) is still up for Steve's bonus points. I don't think elementary/middle school students should be expected to think of sharing a third of a pizza among half a person, but there are probably many natural examples that don't occur to me at the moment. An unnatural one and perhaps intimidating one, is figuring out how to pay a dividend to a holder of a fractional share of stock! David _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
