Tried It Tuesday - Adding Fractions

As we are making our way through our fraction unit I have been trying to come up with some different ways for the students to practice. So I am linking up with Holly from Fourth Grade Flipper for her Tried It Tuesday.

The other day I decided to have the students work in partners. This is what I came up with.

I gave each student an index card with a fraction on it.

I then passed out this sheet.

The border on this worksheet is from Creative Clips  and the font is from Teaches Third in Georgia

The students were then instructed to get up and find a partner. The only condition was that their partner could not have the same denominator as they did. (Since we were working on adding with unlike denominators).

When the student were done,  I used my document camera to project their work and the students shared their thinking with the rest of the class. 

I love how these two showed their work. You can see the list of multiples to assist them in finding the least common denominator.

I have been stressing how the students should show and label their work. I love how these two made it a point to label the LCM. Makes me feel good that they are listening!

These two went above and beyond to show two ways to find the solution. They were the only group to draw fraction tiles to illustrate their solution.

This example also gives me a opportunity to point out a common mistake that students make. Here is their mistake...
3/5 x 2/2 = 6/10 + 3/10 = 9/10 
      6/10    ≠    9/10       =     9/10

3/5 x 2/2 = 6/10 not 6/10 + 3/10. Students make this mistake all the time. The students still arrived at the correct answer and some of you might not consider this a huge issue but it can cause a lot of problems when the students take Algebra. Breaking them of this habit now will cause less problems later. 

I was hoping that we would have enough time for the students to find a second partner. I was interested to see if their work would change after seeing other examples. Unfortunately it took longer than expected and each math class ended with only completing one pairing.

How do you mix it up in your classroom?

Kim