Year 3/4 Bulletin
Understanding Fractions
The mathematics proficiencies of understanding, fluency, problem-solving and reasoning in the curriculum is to ensure that student learning and student independence are at the centre of the curriculum. The curriculum focuses on developing increasingly sophisticated and refined mathematical understanding, fluency, reasoning, and problem-solving skills. These proficiencies enable students to respond to familiar and unfamiliar situations by employing mathematical strategies to make informed decisions and solve problems efficiently.
Learning Intention:To explore how a whole can be cut into different parts.
Purpose:
Students create fraction pizzas and record the distribution of toppings on their pizzas as fractions in both worded and standard form. Using the template, students can colour in (rather than cut and paste) for efficiency.
Task: Students were asked to create their own pizza with toppings. The slices were broken up into eighths, and then students could place any number of toppings on the slices they wanted. Once complete, they needed to correctly identify how many parts of the whole were covered with their chosen toppings. Their understanding is displayed using the denominator of 8 (as the whole is broken up into 8 parts of the whole), however to extend themselves students were able to cut the pizza into more parts than eight. The more parts the pizza was broken up into, the smaller the parts become.
Enabling: Students were provided with a pizza already cut into eighths, as well as the denominator in the fraction already filled out for each topping.
Explore: Students were provided with a pizza already cut into eighths. This allowed them to further cut their whole into halves and quarters, while already having scaffolding in place (for the 1/8ths) of the pizza.
Extending: Students were provided with a pizza that was not cut up. This allowed them to cut their whole into different fractional representations.
Continuing the learning at home:
Continue to have conversations with your child at home about how fractions are represented and shown in our day to day lives.
Eating at a restaurant: Think about a time you go to a restaurant with friends and you may have to split a single bill amongst friends.
Shopping: Think about the time you went shopping for a new school bag. There was half off on everything due to a sale, so you calculate the new price using fractions.
Following a recipe: Recipes sometimes suggest using ½ a teaspoon of sugar, ¾ tablespoon of salt. Some recipes also have quantities to serve 2. If we are making the same dish to serve 3 people, fractions are used to adjust the ingredients accordingly.
Pizza: Dividing the pizza slices equally amongst everyone requires fractions.
Allira, Mr Cornell and Ruby
Year 3/4 Team
Allira.Zeneli@education.vic.gov.au