Fraction Puzzles

Ask students to take out their red, pink, orange, yellow, aqua, and blue fraction circle pieces and put the black, purple, and green pieces away.

Have students read the vignette on the Fraction Puzzles pages in the Student Guide. It introduces the rules for solving the puzzles. Ask students to read the four clues that Roberto's group was given and to study the solutions.

Question 1 asks students to look back at the clues to see if the group's solution satisfies all the guidelines.

Students may respond:

• The first clue said use 2 or 3 pieces and they used 2 pieces.
• The second clue said that the red circle is one whole and in their number sentence they wrote 1/2 for the pink piece and 1/6 for the aqua piece. The pink piece is 1/2 of the red circle and the aqua piece is 1/6 of it.
• The third clue said to make a shape with a value of 2/3. The orange piece is 1/3 of the red circle and you can cover their solution (the pink and aqua piece) with two oranges and it matches, so it is equal to 2/3.
• The fourth clue said to use one aqua, but not all aquas, and they used an aqua and a pink piece.

Question 2 shows another group's solution to the same puzzle. This solution uses only aqua pieces, so it does not meet the fourth guideline. It also uses 4 pieces. The first guideline said to use 2 or 3 pieces. This solution is not acceptable.

Question 3 asks each group to find another solution. An additional solution is shown in Figure 1.