Using Circle Pieces

Read the short vignette before the Fraction Sentences section in the Student Guide. Discuss how students may write number sentences using either repeated addition or multiplication to represent their circle pieces. They determine that 1/5 + 1/5 + 1/5 = 1/5 × 3. Either type of number sentence is acceptable.

Assign Questions 25–29. Students explore equivalence, repeated addition, and multiplication of fractions using circle pieces. They look at a configuration of pieces and develop a number sentence that will match it. See Figures 4 and 5.

Although they do not learn paper-and-pencil procedures for adding fractions with unlike denominators until fifth grade, using manipulatives provides students with a strategy for adding unlike fractions without finding common denominators.

Question 29 asks students to show 1/2 using two or more colors and then to write a number sentence for their results. Figure 5 shows a pink piece covered by an orange piece and an aqua piece. Students write 1/2 = 1/6 + 1/3 to represent this figure.