Fractions and Sharing

We have spent time over the last few days exploring the central idea: Children share challenges and risks. After discussion and research the children have listed their thoughts on issues faced by children around the world. They have listed them under the following headings:

Education (illiteracy and access to education)
Health (no doctors, no medicine, water, warmth, no health insurance)
Shelter (housing and homes)
Families (no parents, mean parents, no family, death, divorce)
No emergency services (firefighters, ambulances, police)
Personal safety (crossing the road, stranger danger, germs and bacteria)
War
Poverty
Natural disasters
Nutrition and malnutrition (healthy eating, lack of food)
Pollution.

The list is long and, of course, more ideas could be added. The children will be researching using books in the library and websites that they can access from our class blog (some are already posted on the blog under 'Useful Websites'). The children will also focus this week on developing their lines of inquiry and linking them to our central idea and to the concepts that drive our Inquiry. The concepts are causation (why is it like it is) and reflection (what do we think about it). The children are excited about the new unit and will work towards making an action plan for their inquiry subject.

In Maths we have been focussing on equivalent fractions. We have explored how the numerator (the number at the top of the fraction) needs to be treated in the same way as the denominator (the number at the bottom of the fraction). If we multiply the numerator by 2 then we must multiply the denominator by 2 to ensure we make an equivalent fraction.

Here the 1 has been multiplied by 25, so the 4 is also multiplied by 25 to make an equivalent fraction.
In the second example the 1 has been multiplied by 2, so the 4 has been multiplied by 2 to make an equivalent fraction. Each of the above fractions are equivalent to each other.

Working in pairs to find equivalent fractions.

The children have also begun to order the fractions according to size and are making an equivalence chart.