Lesson 4

The purpose of this lesson is for students to build non-unit fractions and whole numbers from unit fractions.

In the previous lesson, students named non-unit fractions and made sense of the notation used to write them. In this lesson, students play a game in which they build non-unit fractions from unit fractions (for example, they try to collect enough cards showing \(\frac{1}{6}\) to make \(\frac{3}{6}\)). They record these fractions on a fraction strip diagram. Then, students partition and shade diagrams to represent situations involving fractional lengths and consider the location of the endpoint of a fractional length. This will be helpful in subsequent lessons, when students represent fractions on a number line.

• Create a set of cards from the blackline master for each group of 2.
• Print extra gameboards for the launch and groups that have time for an extra game.
• Students might want a folder or divider so their partner doesn’t see their cards.

How did having visual representations help students think about building fractions from unit fractions in today’s lesson?