Friday, March 11, 2011

Lakeview Students CRUSH Dividing with Fractions!

So there we were in Ms. Roshone's class - working with Trystan (who sends a shout-out to his former teacher Ms. Reevas!) and Travis (24! winner from the inaugural Pi Day Competition!) on some way-complicated problems involving division by fractions. I mean, this stuff is so complicated that only a rocket scientist can figure it out. Amirite????

Well.... a rocket scientist or a SIXTH GRADER!!!

These guys - along with Devan, Jessie, Kyle, Marky and Donetta absolutely crushed division with fractions.


Here was the situation - Ananda was working on an order for bows, and was like TOTALLY freaking out... She knew she'd need 2/3 yard of ribbon to make a bow. But she had NO CLUE how many bows she could make with 4/5 of a yard of ribbon!!! I mean, this situation was CRITICAL, yo!

Anyway, Trystan and Travis got down to it. They knew they were taking 4/5 of a yard of ribbon and dividing it into groups of 2/3.  They made diagrams to clear everything up. They knew Ananda had 4/5 of a yard of ribbon, so they divided their diagram into 5 equal parts. Because the last fifth wasn't really available, Travis X'd it out.


Trystan knew she needed 2/3 of a yard to make a bow, so they also divided this whole into thirds!


This suddenly made total sense! "15 is a common denominator of 1/5s and 1/3s," said Trystan.

"Yeah, and 2/3 of 15 is 10," said Travis as he colored in 10 parts. "So she can make ONE whole bow. And she'll have these 2 parts left." Oh noes!!! What do we do with those two parts?!?!?! Are they 2 parts out of 15??? 2 parts out of 10??? Snap out of it, pal.

"Those are two parts for her next bow." Who said that??? It was Devan, throwing down some input. Travis had it now - "So she'll be able to make 1 and 2/10 bows, right?"

CRUSHED!!!

But the best part was yet to come...

"Ya know if you multiply that 4 by the 3 you get those 12 pieces. And if you multiply that 5 by the 2 you get the 10 he colored in... That's 12/10." Devan - you rock!!!


At that point.... there was nothing left but the high-fiving. Gratz, Ms. Roshone! Who says kids can't figure things out on their own??? 

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