Simon Gregg has been incredibly kind to Fraction Talks. If you need an example of how to engage kids in fractional discourse, follow his twitter feed.

I asked him if he could screencast some short snippets of him using fraction talks with students. Below are two videos of reasoning.

Take a moment to watch two videos from Simon’s class (Video 1; Video 2). This is a fantastic way to start out with Fraction Talks. Simon takes a back seat to the students’ thoughts and when he re-iterates their thinking, they are always given the chance to confirm or deny if his summary was accurate.

The Fraction Talk is led from the front. With documentation occurring on the diagram as the reasoning is shared. This is a great starting point.

I’ve given individuals time to think and then share reasoning, grouped them into small groups and had them do the same, and flashed the image and asked them to estimate. As you get to know the group of students, you can experiment.

Simon’s students built some more Fraction Talks based on these conversations. If your students have the same inkling, submit them! Student creation is an excellent window to their reasoning.

Simon provides his code to a GeoGebra applet to create Fraction Talk squares.