Equivalent Fractions with a Freebie {Mid-Week Math Motivation}

Hello friends!  One of my goals for 2016 is to get back into blogging more consistently.  I'm going to try and create a post mid-week (Wednesday or Thursday) that shares something I've found in math that has been helpful. My goal is to do this at least twice per month.  If I end up with 3 or even <gasp> FOUR times, awesome.. pat me on the back!  But twice is a good way for me to start.  The post  might be about a website, book, video, product, freebie or idea that I found useful, and I want to pass it on to you!

This week I've been reviewing Equivalent Fractions with my Smarties.  I have a little more work to do to wrap up dividing fractions before moving into decimals, but my kids are struggling with creating equal fractions when we review.  I always like to start my fractions unit by creating equal fractions out of construction paper.  You can read a blog post I wrote about this {HERE}.  This year I was really pressed for time before break, and I skipped over having students create posters of equal fractions.  BOY DO I REGRET THIS!  My kids can not think of equal fractions at all!  So here I am back at equal fractions, picking up the pieces of where I should have started the unit.

We began again with making anchor charts of equivalent fractions-- what is equal to  one and one half, one whole, one half, one fourth, and one third.

I divided my students up into groups of 5-6 and had them complete a gallery walk around my classroom.  They had about a minute at each poster.  They had to keep writing as many equal fractions as they could think of, but they could not duplicate any fractions that had already been written.

I did let them take their interactive notebooks with them because our fraction bars are glued in there, and I have many visual learners.  I love listening to their group conversations as they pass work at each chart.  Many started to notice mistakes.... I mean hello?  2/3 is equal to 4/12? This  was AMAZING because that was where I was headed next!
After we did the gallery walk through each poster I sent them back through again with a two minute time limit.  They had to find any mistakes on the poster and complete an error analysis telling what was incorrect, and then correcting the fraction.

This is what I think the best part of the lesson it, most definitely!

I finished this activity by giving my students a sheet with equivalent fraction cards.  They had to match the equivalent fractions and glue them into their interactive notebooks.

If you don't use interactive notebooks have students do them on a large sheet of paper and show you the results.

I let my students work together in pairs to complete this activity.  Fractions are always less scary with a buddy!  This activity gave me a great way to do a quick formative assessment of equivalent fractions and keeping them in an interactive notebook is a great reference tool.  Hang up a large sheet in your classroom as an anchor chart if you need a quick reference. If you want to use this activity with your students, feel free to download it {HERE}

Have a great week!