Clip 7/41: Standard 3: Construct Arguments & Critiques Using Fraction Multiplication Part 1
Overview
Mathematically proficient students understand and use …definitions, and previously established results in constructing arguments. They are able to analyze situations by breaking them into cases…They justify their conclusions, communicate them to others, and respond to the arguments of others…Students at all grades can listen or read the arguments of others, decide whether they make sense, and ask useful questions to clarify or improve the arguments.
Erika Isomura begins her lesson with engaging her 4th- and 5th-grade students in a conversation about the terms whole and part, activating their prior knowledge of work with mentor “string” problems, asking the students to identify the parts and wholes in each scenario.
Her students then work with new problems, sorting and describing differences and similarities between the new problems and the ones they’d done before:
“Are any of these problems a lot like Jesus's problem, where he already knows his pieces or his parts, but he needs the whole amount? And are any of these problems like Camila’s, where she needs the pieces because she already has the whole?”