By Michelle Pace, posted July 20, 2015 – 

By the time you read this follow-up blog entry, we hope that you have had a chance to try out the Vocabulary-with-Fractions strategy within your students, perhaps your own children, or in a summer program. Were you able to extend the activity with other mathematics vocabulary? (Click here if you missed Part 1.)

I teach in a mathematics problem-solving lab at Goldsboro Elementary School, a STEM magnet school in Sanford, Florida. All students come through my lab for a few hours per week. Kindergartners through fifth graders get to experience mathematics through project-based learning using problem solving.

Although every class in every grade level has different needs, I have noticed one important common area that needs attention: My students’ ability to attend to precision has room for improvement. Students’ ability to talk succinctly about their mathematical thinking happens to be one of the Common Core’s Standards for Mathematical Practice. This area is important because students are expected to give clear, thorough explanations of and justifications for their answers. As each grade level experienced the language development strategy, a common theme seemed to arise among teachers observing my lessons: How do we support students’ development through the process of this strategy? I would like to address this commonly asked question and perhaps support your instructional delivery using this strategy. Using this strategy to uncover misconceptions and confirm learning is important. We can support students’ learning and understanding by giving them examples and nonexamples of the meaning of a vocabulary word. For instance, one of the third-grade teachers visiting my lab had difficulty understanding why some of her students were challenged to come up with an idea for halves and thirds. We discovered that the students did not have a complete understanding of what equal means. Knowing this—and providing an intervention to fill this gap—was crucial in enabling students to talk about fractions. We helped these students by showing them real-world examples and nonexamples of what equal means, including taking a granola bar, splitting it into parts, and asking students to compare the parts.

Allowing students to participate in this strategy can uncover information that will be valuable to your lesson planning. Make sure to take some time to think about which prerequisite skills and vocabulary words are important to the success of the vocabulary word chosen for the strategy. Also allow for time to give plenty of examples and nonexamples.  These examples should be as close to real-world and tangible as possible, like the granola bar intervention talked about above. Happy teaching!

Your Turn 

Now it’s your turn. Share thoughts, questions, and experiences that you use to uncover your students’ fraction knowledge. We want to hear from you! Post your comments below or share your thoughts on Twitter @TCM_at_NCTM using #TCMtalk.

Michelle Pace is a graduate of the University of Central Florida’s Lockheed Martin Mathematics and Science Master’s Education Academy. She currently serves as a STEM resource teacher at Goldsboro Elementary Magnet School in Sanford, Florida. She created and implemented the K–grade 5 mathematics problem-solving lab. She is interested in teaching problem solving through project-based learning.