During Unit 1 you explored some of the challenges associated with teaching and learning fractions. Introducing fractions in the context of fair sharing can help students to develop a robust understanding of the part-whole meaning of fractions and other fractions concepts as well. Fraction instruction, based on fair sharing, will be the focus of our second unit in this course.

Fair sharing activities have been shown to be effective in generating student understanding of fractions for a number of reasons.  They activate and call on students’ informal, intuitive understanding of fractions concepts, which allows students to demonstrate their creative thinking about these concepts in the process. Fair sharing activities are also both rich and versatile, offering teachers a myriad of entry points to introduce concepts such as part-whole, equivalence, comparison, measure, and computation.

The overall structure of this unit is similar to that of Unit 1, with core resources and expert panels providing the background, context, and deeper understanding of the unit topic.  You’ll also have the opportunity to deeply examine student thinking and common misconceptions through a selection of fair-sharing activities, and you’ll then have the chance to try these activities with students of your own. In order to provide adequate time for you to implement these ideas in practice, we offer an extended time frame for this unit as well as Units 3 and 4.  Many of these unit elements offer natural entry points into reflective discussion, and you’ll have the opportunity to share your own insights into your experience with your colleagues in the discussion forums.  Finally, you’ll begin to add a lesson plan, PD session, or custom option of your choice into your final project portfolio.

Guiding Questions for this Unit

1. What are fair-sharing activities and why are they recommended to help students build a foundation for understanding fractions?

2. How can fair-sharing activities be used to address misconceptions?

3. How can fair-sharing activities be used with students with different levels of understanding and different learning strengths?