For the last couple of weeks, Class 2 have been exploring and developing understanding of unit fractions. This is the first time class 2 is officially introduced to fractions as numbers (and their numerical representation).
Prior to this unit, in year 1 and 2, students work with partitioning shapes. They have some familiarity with vocabulary related to partitioning shapes from those grades, especially “halves”, “thirds”, and “fourths”, but have yet to name those parts using numbers.
In this unit, students came to understand unit fractions and use them to build other fractions. This idea is tightly connected to what students know about using “1” to build other whole numbers. The students used number lines to explore how fractions are numbers that live on the number line with the whole numbers they already know. They also ordered the fractions from the smallest to the largest and compared fractions (with the same denominator) using the terms larger than-smaller than.
They were excited and happy to learn more. And no better way of understanding fraction and division than baking and dividing a pizza that we generously shared with the whole class!
