Fractions
Strand: Number
Outcome: 7
Step 3: Plan for Instruction
Guiding Questions
- What learning opportunities and experiences should I provide to promote learning of the outcomes and permit students to demonstrate their learning?
- What teaching strategies and resources should I use?
- How will I meet the diverse learning needs of my students?
A. Assessing Prior Knowledge and Skills
Before introducing new material, consider ways to assess and build on students' knowledge and skills related to fractions.
Ways to Assess and Build on Prior Knowledge 
B. Choosing Instructional Strategies
Consider the following guidelines for teaching equivalent fractions and ordering fractions:
- Access students' prior knowledge of fractions and build on this understanding.
- To develop understanding, include everyday problem-solving contexts for equivalent fractions and the comparison of fractions, then use concrete representations and connect them to pictorial and symbolic representations.
- To demonstrate understanding, have the students represent the symbolic equivalent fractions and the comparison of fractions concretely and pictorially.
- Provide many examples of the three models for equivalent fractions and comparison of fractions: part of a region, part of a length or measurement and part of a set.
- By using examples and non-examples, have the students construct the meaning that equivalent fractions represent the same part of a given whole.
- Guide the students in constructing their own rules that are mathematically sound for developing a set of equivalent fractions.
- Emphasize that fractions can be compared only if they all refer to parts of the same whole.
- Reinforce the relationship between the symbolic and pictorial modes (two symbolic equivalent fraction names and two corresponding pictorial equivalent fractions) by assigning problems in which three of these are provided and the student determines the fourth by using their models (Van de Walle and Lovin 2006).
- Emphasize the meaning of a fraction as the various ways to compare fractions are explored, communicated and evaluated for mathematically sound reasoning.
- Encourage flexibility in thinking as students compare fractions in a problem-solving context.
C. Choosing Learning Activities
Learning Activities are examples of activities that could be used to develop student understanding of the concepts identified in Step 1.
Grade 5
