I am a fan of repurposing (NEW WoRd!!!) problems. I figure, if you can read a book for different purposes, why not math problems? Plus, it makes planning that much easier for you! And right now we have enough on our plates!

1. Played “Cover it Up!” twice. Please see Fractions Day 2 post for how to play the game. The questions I used were focused on were:  Who has less? or Who is losing? How do you know? to front load for today’s lesson. NOTE: I still make him write the addition sentence at the end of each game to work on notation and such.
2. Using a whiteboard (or scratch paper), I drew the equal symbol (=). What does this mean? Today Chris said they were equal, or the same. We moved on.
3. Under that work, I drew the greater than symbol (>). What does this symbol mean? (The first number is bigger or greater than the second number.) Again, I had him choose two fraction pieces from the Fraction Kit to compare, with the first being bigger than the second. He actually did not choose the same ones as yesterday. We then wrote the number sentence that it represented.
4. I drew the greater than symbol (<). What does this symbol mean? (The first number is smaller or less than the second number.) I had him choose two fraction pieces from the Fraction Kit to compare, with the first being smaller than the second. He actually did not choose the same ones as yesterday. My little Sassy Sam just reversed the ones he had. We wrote the inequality and moved on.
5. I had Chris compare pairs of the unit fractions from the Fraction Kit and tell me which one was smaller and why.  They were the same ones I used yesterday. He didn’t notice!
6. We moved on to the fractions with different numerators (still only using the denominators from the Fraction Kit). I gave him (one at a time) pairs of fractions to compare. He could use the Fraction Kit pieces to determine which was smaller, circling it on the whiteboard. I asked him to convince me why one fraction was smaller than the other, and he verbally explained or showed me with his fraction pieces. See below for the sequence of pairs we explored (The red fractions are the smaller fractions.)I often asked, How many ________ would you need to make them equal?, just to start the seed of equivalent fractions (Day 5). I threw at him two unit fractions (1/2 and 1/7) to see if he could apply his understanding without always using the Fraction Kit pieces.

Happy Comparing!