Clip 8/21: Standard 7: Look for & Make Use of Structure Using Fraction Multiplication Part 1
Overview
Mathematically proficient students…look closely to discern a pattern or structure.
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?”