Lesson 9

Equal Pieces

Lesson Purpose

The purpose of this lesson is for students to partition circles and rectangles into halves and fourths and determine whether a shape is partitioned into equal pieces.

Lesson Narrative

In previous lessons, students created two- and three-dimensional shapes from smaller shapes.

Students begin this lesson by composing shapes and compare those made with equal pieces to those made with unequal pieces. Then, they partition shapes into two and four equal size pieces and learn the terms halves and fourths. Students do not have to create exactly equal pieces, but they should be able to explain that the pieces should be equal.

  • Action and Expression
  • MLR8

Learning Goals

Teacher Facing

  • Determine whether shapes are partitioned into equal pieces.
  • Partition circles and rectangles into halves and fourths.

Student Facing

  • Let’s split shapes into equal-size pieces.

Required Materials

Materials to Gather

Materials to Copy

  • Circles and Squares
  • Pieces of Circles

Required Preparation

Activity 1:

  • Cut out the pieces of the circles on the blackline master. Each copy has enough pieces for 8 students. 

Activity 2:

  • Consider having extra shapes cut from the blackline masters for students who may need more than one of each shape.

CCSS Standards

Building On

Addressing

Lesson Timeline

Warm-up 10 min
Activity 1 10 min
Activity 2 15 min
Activity 3 10 min
Lesson Synthesis 10 min
Cool-down 5 min

Teacher Reflection Questions

How does this work build the foundation for understanding fractions in later grades? How is this introductory work different from the work student will do beginning in Grade 3?

Print Formatted Materials

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Additional Resources

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