21st November

Thanks to all those who came and took part last Wednesday. Feedback from the course showed that your contributions inspired others.

As part of the follow up work I shall be posting ideas that have been tried as a consequence of the course.

Try them yourselves and feedback how you found them.

Fractions of Amounts

Tried out with year 8 Foundation pupils accessing part of the Autumn element of the National Strategy Teaching Objectives.

We found an open space, on this occasion it was part of the hall.
The class counted how many there were (16) and then I asked them to split into two halves.
They did this and then I asked them 'what is half of sixteen?
Then the groups split in half again and we ascertained what a quarter of sixteen was and then by reforming the value for three quarters of sixteen.

One pupils came to help me pose the questions and we went about sorting out thirds of fifteen
and the fifths.

Conclusion

This worked well in trying to explain the concept of fractions of whole amounts and revealed quite quickly the misconceptions some of them had.