My Personal Learning Path

I wanted to continue to look at the relationship between fractions and decimals.  I found another great video at www.khanacademy.com .  Again, I like the idea of using the base 10 blocks to really give students a visual.  This video also shows how to use a number line to help students understand the process. I found a worksheet that I thought would be helpful and I completed it.  I almost forgot to simplify my fractions! I think that I have a better understanding of fractions and decimals after researching the topic over the past few weeks.  I now have more tools for explaining the subject to my future students, and I am thankful for all the other PLP's that touched upon the same subject!

This week I wanted to start looking at how fractions and decimals are related.  I came across an interesting lesson plan at www.education.com  that I thought would be really helpful.  It is a lesson plan for 4th grade math. The lesson begins by engaging students in a discussion about nicknames.  Then you ask whether or not calling someone by their nickname changes who they are.  You can relate fractions and decimals by explaining that they are both different names for the same value. The lesson I looked at stuck with denominators of 10 or 100, that way they can use base 10 blocks.  So, when you show the students the fraction 53/100, you would explain to them that you would use the numerator to fill the tenths and hundredths places to get 0.53. The lesson included a group activity using a deck of playing cards.  The students are put into groups of 3 or 4 and they need to split the deck into face cards and number cards.  The kings are equal to...

Last week I looked at dividing whole numbers by fractions.  This week I wanted to switch it and learn more about dividing unit fractions by whole numbers.  Again, I used www.khanacademy.com   for video tutorials of how this was done.  Since I did some research last week, I was able to procedurally complete the worksheet this week, but I really found the video at Kahn Academy helpful to see it visually.  The worksheet I completed was found at www.commoncoresheets.com . Here is a sample question, and I will try to explain it visually.  Say you have the problem: 1/8 divided by 2.  You would start by drawing a box and dividing it into 8 equal sections.  Then highlight one of those sections to visually represent 1/8th. Next you would divide that shaded section, as well as all other sections, into two equal parts.  The answer will be the fraction represented by the top left cor...