Estimating with Fractions: Rotation Day A

Lesson Frame:

• We will solve problems involving the addition and subtraction of fractions.
• I will use benchmark fractions to estimate mentally and assess the reasonableness of my answers.

Group 1 & 4

Image Credit

I worked with groups 1 & 4 today on task cards involving estimating fractions and estimating fraction sums and differences.  I am having the groups complete this activity tomorrow and wanted to give some guidance on how to solve these problems.  I was very pleased to note that this group had no difficulty actually adding and subtracting fractions to check for reasonableness!

Group 2

Image Credit

I had this group work with math choice boards.  I did limit their choices to the M and A columns.  Basically, they had to choose 5-8 fractions and determine whether they were close to 0, 1/2, or 1.  The challenge came when they had to write a word problem to go with a topic and a fractions they had chosen.

Group 3

This is my UIL Number Sense group.  Today they learned a new "shortcut" when multiplying two numbers close to, but less than, 100.  I had to cut this group down to 8 this past week.  This Friday, I have to have my team, so this group will be only 4 students next week.  At that point, I will have two activities for my group 3 students.

Assignment

We completed our first Fifth Grade Builder in a while.  I was pleased to see that students had retained much of the new information we had learned before our trip to the Outdoor School.

I think the best part of my day was having a student who was upset that time was up and he had to stop working on Think Through Math!  He is so excited that he is almost to his goal, he decided he would work on it after school during ACE.  It makes me happy to have a student enthusiastic about working on math!!!