Ask students to take out the red, pink, orange, yellow, aqua, and blue pieces, and put the others away until later in the lesson.
Questions 1–5 on the Using Circle Pieces pages in the Student Guide reacquaint students with the circle pieces. Have students work in pairs to answer the questions. Observe students as they work to see how well they know the relative sizes of the pieces and if they are able to show their solutions in drawings.
Observe students as they complete Questions 1–5 to assess their ability to represent fractions with circle pieces [E1]. If students do not easily recognize the relative sizes of the pieces, ask them to complete the Circle Pieces Review Master to give them more experiences with the pieces. See Before the Lesson.
You may also choose to organize your lesson based on your students' experience and comfort using circle pieces. You may want to give them additional time to figure the problems out with the pieces before discussion.
Have students demonstrate or describe their solutions as they work. Questions 1, 2, and 5 ask students to show more than one configuration of pieces to solve a problem. Ask students to demonstrate the different possibilities and explain them.
Making the same shape using a different configuration of pieces leads students to the concept of equivalence, e.g., that two blues are the same size as one yellow. Later, when using simply symbolic notation, a child will be able to picture and then intuit the validity of a statement such as 2/8 = 1/4.
Some questions ask students to make a drawing (e.g., Questions 4C and 5B on the Circle Pieces Review Master and Questions 2C and 5A in the Student Guide) to help them develop mental images of the pieces. In later activities, students who can visualize the fractional pieces are able to move more smoothly into working with symbolic notation for fractions.
Point out to students that when they make drawings, they need only make sketches so that someone else can understand what they did. They need not take a lot of time drawing the pieces exactly to scale. Students can also trace the pieces they use. Encourage students to label the pieces they have drawn with the colors as shown in the Student Guide to show which pieces they have used.
