Description
What our Interpret Fractions as Division lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Interpret Fractions as Division teaches students how to understand fractions as a division problem. At the end of the lesson, students will be able to interpret a fraction as division of the numerator by the denominator and solve problems dividing the numerator by the denominator. This lesson is for students in 5th grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the blue box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand.
Options for Lesson
Included with this lesson is an “Options for Lesson” section that lists a number of suggestions for activities to add to the lesson or substitutions for the ones already in the lesson. One optional addition to this lesson is to have your students create a word problem and images showing the use of using division of the numerator by a denominator. You could also have your students create a quiz for another student to complete. Finally, try conducting an “Improper Fraction” Bee for students to mentally change from given improper fractions to mixed or whole numbers.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page includes a paragraph with additional guidelines and things to think about as you begin to plan your lesson. This page also includes lines that you can use to add your own notes as you’re preparing for this lesson.
INTERPRET FRACTIONS AS DIVISION LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Division and Fractions
The Interpret Fractions as Division lesson plan includes two pages of content. When you divide, your answer, the quotient, is often a whole number. For example, when you divide 21 / 7, you get 3, a whole number. Fractions are kind of like division problems. If you want to split a pizza between four people, you need to divide the pizza into equal parts. Each of you eats a fraction of the pizza.
The lesson includes a helpful diagram of a pizza cut into eight pieces. If you split the pizza with four friends, you each get 2/8ths of the pizza. When you add each person’s share of the pizza together, you get 1: 2/8 + 2/8 + 2/8 + 2/8 = 8/8 = 1.
This is an easy way to see how fractions relate to division. In the pizza example, 8/8 as a fraction is the same as dividing 8 by 8 to get a quotient of 1. This means that you can also write the dividing of the eight pieces of pizza as a fraction: 8/4 = 2.
We call the line in between the numerator and denominator a fraction bar. However, the fraction bar can also be thought of as a division line, since we can change all fractions into division problems.
Fractions as Division
We can turn any fraction into a division problem, as we can always divide the numerator by the denominator. If we use variables, the fraction equals a ÷ b. We can look at an example to understand this concept better: 7/3 = 7 ÷ 3 = 2 1/3. Because 7 has two 3s, the 2 becomes the whole number when we turn 7/3 into a mixed fraction. The remainder, 1, becomes the numerator, and the denominator stays the same.
Proper fractions are the same as division problems. For example, 1/2 and 1 ÷ 2 are the same. Remember that you can think of fraction bars as division lines. You can simply divide the numerator by the denominator: a/b = a ÷ b or numerator ÷ denominator. Your answer can be a mixed number, whole number, or fraction!
INTERPRET FRACTIONS AS DIVISION LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Interpret Fractions as Division lesson plan includes three worksheets: an activity worksheet, a practice worksheet, and a homework assignment. You can refer to the guide on the classroom procedure page to determine when to hand out each worksheet.
POSTER ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
Students will work with a partner to complete the lesson activity. Each pair will create a poster that outlines the process and steps to change improper fractions to mixed or whole numbers. They will include pictures and outline the process step-by-step using the correct vocabulary. Each pair should also include examples.
FRACTIONS AND WHOLE NUMBERS PRACTICE WORKSHEET
For the practice worksheet, students will first change 10 fractions into whole numbers, showing their work using division. They will then change 20 fractions into mixed numbers, also showing their work using division.
INTERPRET FRACTIONS AS DIVISION HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
Like the practice worksheet, for the homework assignment, students will first change 10 fractions into whole numbers, showing their work using division. They will then change 20 fractions into mixed numbers, also showing their work using division.
Worksheet Answer Keys
This lesson plan includes answer keys for the practice worksheet and the homework assignment. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
