Fraction Talks And Math For Love

Recently, I teamed up with Math For Love to bring an idea for a scaled set of pattern blocks to life. The result was the creation of Upscale Pattern Blocks.

(You can read the origin story of this new set of pattern blocks here).

Dan Finkel (the founder of Math for Love) has created some Fraction Talk images that take advantage of the new, scaled pattern blocks and posted them in a free lesson on his website.

The images are also available on this site under the “Manipulatives” photo gallery.

Fraction War Cards from Carla Dawson

One of the earliest Fraction Talk ideas to come from the community of teachers that took up the idea was that of Fraction Talk War. As described in this earlier post, teachers began to use Fraction Talk squares in familiar game structures such as war to elicit student decision making. I have received numerous website replies and social media notifications from teachers who have used this idea with their learners. Initiatives like these are what makes online teaching communities so powerful: Somebody has an idea and we all can run with it in ways that fit our learners’ needs.

Enter Carla Dawson.

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Fraction Talk War

The most exciting thing about creating Fraction Talks has been the range of ways that teachers have morphed them into any number of engaging activities for students. I have done my best to keep up with the innovation, but it is becoming an impossible task! It has been inspiring to watch the collective creativity get to work on a what is becoming a global project. Continue reading

Fraction Talks and WODB

If you are unfamiliar with Which One Doesn’t Belong?, you need to become familiar with it. It is an incredibly powerful framework to kids noticing, talking, and making mathematical meaning.

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Fraction Talks and Clothesline Math

This post details how Fraction Talks has been combined with a critical grade school understanding: the number line. It is an amazing mash-up of resources, and one of my personal favourite ways to use Fraction Talks in the classroom.

The combination of Fraction Talks and Clothesline Math has been elegantly combined by Erick Lee. His post describes the benefits of both classroom structures and provides downloadables for ease of implementation. The link to his post can be found here. Many thanks to Erick for his vision and creativity! Continue reading

The 12 Days of Fraction Talks

This post is designed to offer one road to implementation of Fraction Talks as a productive routine in your classroom. Like anything in the classroom, the lived experiences will cause twists and turns. The best plans are altered and (sometimes) laid to waste.

If student thinking triggers action that perturbs the progression… follow it as you are comfortable. Continue reading