Description
What our Fractions and Rectangles lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Fractions and Rectangles demonstrates to students how rectangles can be used to solve fraction multiplication problems. Examples are included showing two fractions being multiplied together, as well as a whole number being multiplied by a fraction. At the end of the lesson, students will be able to use a rectangular diagram to visually demonstrate multiplying a fraction by a fraction and a fraction by a whole number. 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. The supplies that you will need for this lesson include highlighters, bottle caps, and a deck of cards.
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. If you’d like to add an additional activity to the lesson, you can have your students create a how-to video explaining the concepts in the lesson to a younger student. You could also have your students draw posters based on a problem and explain the solution. It might be a good idea to encourage your students to think about using other shapes. If you have more advanced students, you could begin to help them make the connection between the number of parts and total pieces to the algorithm for multiplying fractions across the numerator and across the denominator.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page includes lines that you can use to add your own notes as you’re preparing for this lesson.
FRACTIONS AND RECTANGLES LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Fractions and Rectangles
The Fractions and Rectangles lesson plan includes two content pages. We can use rectangles to solve fraction multiplication problems and show how to calculate the fraction of a fraction. The lesson jumps straight into an example problem, 1/4 x 1/2.
One fourth times one half is the same as one fourth of one half. In other words, we’re taking a fractional part of a fraction. To start solving, we first draw a rectangle. The denominator of the first fraction tells us how many vertical sections our rectangle needs. In this case, the denominator is 4, so we need four sections. The numerator tells us how many pieces to shade. The numerator is 1, so we shade one section.
Next, the denominator of the second fraction tells us how many horizontal lines we need to draw. The denominator is 2, so we need two sections. Finally, the numerator of the second fraction tells us how many rows to shade. The numerator is 1, so we shade one row.
When we colored in the row, it overlapped with one shaded part from the first fraction. This is our answer! There is one section of eight with overlap, so the answer is 1/8. Therefore, 1/4 x 1/2 = 1/8.
The lesson includes two more helpful examples that follow the same steps. In one example, we see that multiply across the numerator and denominator gives us the same answer as the shading method. The other example shows students how to handle multiplying a whole number by a fraction using a fraction strip, which is essentially the same as the rectangles used earlier, but with only one row.
FRACTIONS AND RECTANGLES LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Fractions and Rectangles 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.
BOTTLE CAPS ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
For the activity worksheet, students will reach into a bag and pick out two bottle caps. They will multiply the numbers on the bottle caps by drawing a rectangle to solve each problem.
RECTANGLES PRACTICE WORKSHEET
The practice worksheet asks students to use the rectangles provided on the worksheet to solve three multiplication problems.
FRACTIONS AND RECTANGLES HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
For the homework assignment, students will use dice to roll the numerator and denominator of different fractions. They will then multiply these fractions using a rectangle.
QUIZ
This lesson also includes a quiz that you can use to test students’ understanding of the lesson material. For the quiz, students will fill in the blanks on the diagrams using the provided word bank.
Worksheet Answer Keys
This lesson plan includes answer keys for the practice worksheet and the quiz. 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.
