A Snapshot into Math

Learning Intention: To explore what happens when you divide a whole into two parts.

Learning Experience Overview:

In Math, students have been developing their understanding of interpreting fractions. In this learning experience, they were exploring the concept of halves by cooking pizzas in our kitchen.

Launch:

The class viewed a slideshow that explored the concept of cutting foods into equal halves. Students discussed that:

When a pizza is whole, its a circle, and it will always be same shape (semi-circle) when cut in half
When a sandwich is cut into equal halves, you can create rectangles and triangles
A lemon can be cut into halves through length and width
Each example of halves shows 2 equal parts

Explore:

Students had the opportunity to cook their pizzas’ in our kitchen. They were instructed to make a pizza with 2 equal halves using different toppings on each half eg. One half cheese, one half cheese and pineapple. When the pizzas were cooked, students cut their pizza into equal halves according to how they divided their pizza toppings.

Enabling:

Students worked with their teacher to visually see how a pizza can be equally split in half by pre-cutting the pizza in half.

Extending:

Students made quarters with 4 different pizza toppings.

Summarising:

During this lesson, students discussed:

A pizza when it is whole and when it is in equal halves

In this learning experience, students are learning to:

identifying the whole and a half
dividing a whole to create 2 equal parts
Identifying unequal halves

Examples of students’ work:

What you can do to continue the learning at home from this experience:

Make pizzas with 2 different toppings
Explore or find things around the house showing half
Practise pouring half a glass of milk or juice
Practise cutting foods into equal halves: pizza, sandwiches, fruit

Session 1 slides