Our 5th grade and 1st grade buddies returned to the media center today for another round of media center collaboration on math standards.  Now the 1st graders are working on fractions.  The 5th graders worked with their own teacher ahead of time to view the 1st grade fraction standards and familiarize themselves with what was expected of 1st graders.  Their teacher encouraged them to stretch the 1st graders thinking within reason.

Today, we started on the carpet in the media center.  I used the document camera to display the book Fraction Action by Loreen Leedy.  I only showed pieces of the book at a time because I paused and allowed the students to work with their buddies to draw representations of the various fractions from the book on the iPad.  They used any of the drawing apps that were installed.  Once they drew their representation, students closed iPads and we looked at the representations in the book before moving to another fraction.  We looked at 1/2, 1/3, and 1/4 in the book.

Next, the groups split.  Half of the students used a pizza fraction app on the iPads while the other half went to the computer lab and used several fraction websites that were compiled by the teachers.  I stayed with the students on the iPads and had conversations with them about the fraction app.  When they reached a point where they were getting bored with the app, we moved to other math apps to practice basic 1st grade math facts.

We plan to continue the fraction lesson on another day by incorporating some fractions that move beyond the 1st grade fractions.