| Discussion: | All Topics |
| Topic: | Fractions, concept and calculations |
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| Subject: | RE: Fractions, concepts |
| Author: | tackweed |
| Date: | Oct 10 2004 |
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How do you teach conceptual understanding of
> fractions?
This is the toughie. I did a little e-searching and came up with the
following from the folks at ERIC:
http://www.ericdigests.org/2004-1/fractions.htm
Which seems to give a good base to the problem. One part which they referred to
but did not eleaborate on was the "prefraction knowledge" of young children. I
am assuming that this is the exposure children have had to contextual
fractions.
It would seem that there might be a good case made for generating situations
where children receive more contextual clues without having them as math
problems - some of the simpler ideas are time and money, i.e., half-past;
quarter-to, half-dollar; quarter; etc. Other ideas might include directions
such as 'color half of the page' form three groups - one-third here, etc.
Unfortunately we don't have half-pence and other 'funny money' but it does
seem that we could inculcate more of the terms in our everyday lessons.
From this point on, the above article seems to have some good ideas which I will
attempt to work into my own materials - especialy the part about too much too
early...
Jeff
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