04/28/06: What Does Fraction Really Mean?
“What does Fraction really mean?” Alexa asked today while I was dropping her off to her school.Thus far, I’ve covered 2-digits multiplications (26 x 32 on paper), divisions (321 divided by 3 mentally; and 4225 divided by 65 on paper) with her and she was ready to move on.
“What do you think it’s about?” (I wanted to see where her understanding was and go from there)
“It’s about how much you have in a group?” (This is how most school textbooks introduces fraction — though not entirely untrue, it is not the clearest way to introduce Fraction — in my opinion any way).
“hm…well, remember that big chocolate cookie daddy makes in the big pot?”
“yeah”
“well, if all four of us spilt the whole cookie evenly, how much cookie do each of us get?
“a quarter!”
“Right! so in fraction we say it like this ‘ we each get 1 over 4′, which is exactly like you said, ‘a quarter’”
“so fraction means splits cookies?” (only if she knew how close she was to the essence of fraction!)
“Right on! Fraction means ‘A part of a whole’. Now can you tell me when splitting cookies, do you want more people splitting it or less?”
“Less of course! I’ll have more splitting an olive with me” (she does not like olive as you might’ve guessed).
“So if we bring a cookie made of olive to your school, and all the kids there splitting it evenly, how big of chunk do you get?”
“hm…1 over 32″ (there are 32 kids in her combined 1st and 2nd grades).
“Right!”
“Now going back to the cookies with chocolate, if I didn’t want mine and give my share to you, how much would you have?”
“Two quarters of course!”
“Right again. So we say ’2 over 4′. Now do you know how we write 2 over 4?”
“2 with a line and then 4.”
“Good! Can you tell me which number is on the top? The 2 or the 4?”
“2.”
“So when you want eat more, do you have the bottom number big or top number big?’
“The bottom number is how many people splitting it, so I want the bottom number small and the top number big, since the top number is how many slices I get to have.”
“Very good!”
“Okay, Mommy, my head had enough math now.”
That was a good start on fractions.
Happy Zen Math!
(c) Feenix Pan, 2007. All rights reserved.