Paula Beardell Krieg posted: " Equivalent Fractions A friend is going into teaching 3rd and 4th graders. I want to talk to her about fractions. I'm practicing my rant on you. It not that they lied to us, It's just that there is something going on that bears looking" Playful Bookbinding and Paper Works
A friend is going into teaching 3rd and 4th graders.
I want to talk to her about fractions. I'm practicing my rant on you.
It not that they lied to us, It's just that there is something going on that bears looking at.
What's the first thing we think is important to teach a child after they master the concept of one? The focus goes right to two. Then we keep pushing the numbers to get bigger and bigger.
Being able to count big numbers is highly overrated.
Sadly, the concept of ONE as a definable nearly insignificant little quantity gets branded into impressionable young brains.
Pieces of Ome
It turns out that it's fair to say that most of the action in mathematics happens between zero and one.
Here's the big shift: after learning about numbers getting bigger and bigger, when third and fourth grade come along, all of a sudden the focus shifts to number less than one.
Oh, except that the ONE that's being looked at is not a quantity. And the numbers that are less than one are mistakenly simplified to being numbers less than one.
The most accurate fraction representing pi with a denominator less than 30,000
I want big billboards to be displayed everywhere that say ONE IS MORE THAN YOU THINK IT IS!
Embarking on the study of fractions is the first grown-up journey into mathematics. The first thing that is requires is nothing less than a full shifting the one concept of ONE. Instead of being the first counting number, it's now THE WHOLE THING.
Fractions aren't numbers smaller than one. They are quantities compared to ONE.
This is where numbers shine, where they illuminate comparisons.
The next billboard I would want put up is, MATH IS NOT COUNTING or adding or multiplying. MATH IS COMPARING. Parts of the whole. Percentages. Hypotenuse of a triangle. Rise over run. Line just touching to the curve.
Entering the world of fractions requires leaving previous ideas of counting at the door.
There's a part two to this post, which blows my mind every time I think about it. But it's going to wait a few days.
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