Real World Connections: Fraction Style Part 1

We were all about the fractions this past week!  And it was SO.MUCH.FUN!
Honestly, I think it was fun because they understood it!  That always makes the teacher just a bit happier...right :)

As I listened, observed, and took mental notes all week, I realized that they were "getting" it because we provided them with so many real-world, hands-on experiences to connect to.

It all started with the ice cream party to introduce equal and unequal.  If you missed that post, no worries!  Just click on "ice cream party" to check it out! 
Then we moved right into our Powerpoint that introduced fractions with photographs of real objects and situations that can happen.  We did some fraction sorts and cut up some pizzas and cookies to really hit home the idea of halves, thirds, and fourths.

Then we moved right into explaining how a whole can be split in different ways.  Jess and I knew that we wanted to do this with rectangular bars that the kids could divide.  But through our discussion we decided that eating graham crackers during the lesson would be really helpful!  And...sure enough...it was! 

I started the lesson by eating one whole graham cracker.  Then students colored in the rectangle on their recording sheet.  Then Jess ate 1/2 of a graham cracker.  They colored that in and wrote the fraction.  We proceeded by eating a third of the cracker and then a fourth. 

Our students thought it was so unfair that I got to eat the whole!  They discovered quickly that a fourth was smaller than a half.  The class decided that they would rather have half a cracker than a fourth.
YES!! SUCCESS!
For days a student repeatedly talked about the fact that I ate a WHOLE! (umm....I can eat a lot more than that!)

The power of real word connections (and food, honestly) is never surprising but always astounds me!