I am doing my resource set for the fractions section of 6th grade mathematics. I taught this area this past year but just by starting this assignment, I have more tools to work with then I did previously. This is a difficult topic for students. I hope to be able to get each student to a level of understanding with these resources, that I may not have been able to before.
Text Annotations
1. The Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bar Fractions Book, by Jerry Pollatta, illustrated by Robert C. Bolster
This book is a great tool to get kids to recall information about fractions and works easily with an interactive lesson involving Hershey bars.
2. Funny and Fabulous Fraction Stories, by Dan Greenburg and Jared Lee
This book starts out around a third grade level but is a great review. It is appropriate for struggling sixth graders and uses humor and fun to teach. Readers work throughout the book and solve the problems while laughing.
3. Painless Fractions, by Alyece Cummings
A very simple and concisely written book for those struggling with fractions. It goes step by step to try and conquer this topic that many find painful.
4. Fabulous Fractions, by Lynette Long
This book gives some great fractions lessons either in fun stories or great interactive activities. This would be a fantastic resource for teachers, not something to be read or done cover to cover with the students. It covers pretty much every SOL dealing with fractions through middle school.
You can check out a chunk of it right now at Google Books.
5. Piece = Part = Portion, by Scott Gifford, photography by Shmuel Thaler
This is a great book to entertain and pull the related concepts of fractions, decimals, and percents together. This is a fairly simple idea but somewhat abstract and this helps students make the connections. The easy to understand text and terrific picture examples from everyday life really bridge these ideas.
Web Annotations
1. Tony Fraction’s Pizza Shop– This site is a game where kids make pizzas according to the order. They have to fill the pizza with the correct portion of ingredients. Often the fraction is out of the whole pizza but sometimes it is simplified and they have to figure out how many pieces they need to make it equivalent.
2. Fresh baked fractions– This link takes you through finding different equivalent fractions. You get four fractions and choose the one that is not equivalent. You earn pieces of pie for each correct answer. This is not timed but as kids get better at seeing/computing equivalent fractions you could add that as a component if there are multiple computers.
3. Soccer Shoutout– This is a very simple game that focuses on multiplication of fractions. It goes a little beyond the basic multiplication of fractions because the player has to reduce the answer to simplest form in order to score. This is for those that understand basic multiplication, but need more practice with multiplying fractions and simplifying the answer.
4. Who wants pizza?– This site may seem simple but it is a great one for 6th graders. It has 6 different sections that go from reviewing what fractions are to multiplying fractions. The first four parts should be review for 6th graders but most likely a much needed review. Then parts 5 and 6 take you through the new material they need to be learning. This would be something that you could work through over a couple of days or even leave for a substitute since it really works through the topic and then gives practice problems.
5. Multiplying Fractions– This link is just one page and it is more of a drill/practice than a game. You can modify the instructions by seeing how many they can get correct in a certain amount of time or see how many they can get correct before they miss one. This is the multiplying fractions drill page
Additional Resources
1. Another site you might want to use before they start this one is
http://www.kidsolr.com/math/fractions.html
This site helps to review fractions and multiplying fractions and could be used for remediation if a student is not ready for the drill page.
2. This site has a couple of fraction card games that would be great for an independent center. The rules/instructions could be printed and laminated for use anytime to practice adding fractions.
http://www.learn-with-math-games.com/adding-fraction-games.html
3. This game is very similar to “war” with a standard deck of cards. It has printable fraction cards that can be laminated and used with the instructions at a game center without a teacher. This competitive game really works with comparing fractions and understanding what the fractions represent.
http://www.learn-with-math-games.com/support-files/fraction-feud.pdf
4. Candy Fractions- This page gives you a real attention getter. Almost all kids like chocolate and when you pull out a Hershey bar they really want to know why. This activity would be a great pre-lesson to the m&m statistics activity.
http://www.learn-with-math-games.com/fraction-paper-games.html
5. Tutorials- go to the Virginia department of education link below, under the computation and estimation section,click on the two sections you see below, the links send you to the page and you have to scroll down to the section and click on these topics, on the VDOE page to get the videos
Fraction Concepts (Grades 6 & 7)
Dr. Ena Gross, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) professor of mathematics education, on the prerequisites students need for fraction computation.
Fraction Computation (Grade 6)
Dr. Ena Gross on one method sixth graders can use to approach multiple-choice fraction computation problems.