Transcript

What we're looking at now is a math unit that I integrated with different aspects of student learning, a little bit of literacy and maybe some reading and writing. And so after we did some initial, basic, hands-on work with fractions, establishing concepts, like a whole divided into equal parts is a fraction and naming some of those parts, we went to what everybody thinks about with fractions which is pizza, and what kids really relate to. And we went through the process of creating pizzas, dividing them into equal parts, students had the decision making around that, students had to decide on a pizza that they wanted to make, divide it into a specific number of parts, and then decide which toppings were to go into each of those parts. And when I introduced the activity to the students, like anything, I always start with the purpose of the activity, because what I don't want kids going away with is that we're just making pizzas. What we're actually doing is showing what we understand about fractions by doing this fun activity. 

So, I told the students that they were going to be designing their own pizza, we're not actually making it yet, just designing it, and that they were going to be showing their understanding of fractions by doing that. I went through a list of expectations with them in terms of what they needed to do with the pizza, they needed to decide on the number of equal segments, they had to be able to talk about how they divided their pizza, they had to decide on their toppings, and distribute them amongst the equal pieces so that not all the pieces had the same ingredients on them, because later what we were going to be doing, and we knew this from the beginning, was trading their fraction pizzas with a friend in the class once they had done some writing about it. So, step one they designed their pizzas, I got all sorts of interesting things happening with the pizzas, gumballs on some chocolate on others, so they designed their pizza, had a great time, and I had a lot of one-on-one conferences talking about can you tell me about your pizza, what fractions did you divide your pizza into, what fraction can you use to decide how many of the pieces have green pepper on them, what fraction of the pieces have mushrooms on them? And we did a lot of talk about that, and then I modelled for the students how you could write those same things down. I gave them specific prompts, things that I wanted them to write, and I told them that the purpose was that eventually they would trade their writing with someone in the class who would then try to reconstruct their fraction pizza. And from start to finish, what I was able to do was walk around and assess their understanding of the fractions that were involved through this fun activity that they were doing.

Related References