Using Models to Understand Fractions

Final Project: Planning a Fractions Lesson

Name:
Date:
School:
Lesson Title:

Directions: For your final project, you will plan a fractionslesson that brings together much of your learning for this course. You will also conduct a student interview and integrate what you learn from the interview into the lesson that you develop.

The purpose of this final project is to help you develop an effective, research-based lesson plan about fractions that can be used in your classroom.Your lesson should accomplish the following goals:

  1. Teach students about a fractional concept or operation, such as equivalence, addition of fractions, or comparing fractions;
  2. Utilize either a linear measurement model or an area model; and
  3. Target at least one student misconception about fractions that you discovered during your student interview.

Use this template as a guide for the final project—the table cells will automatically expand as you type. You will submit the completed template to your facilitator at the end of the course. Make sure to fill out the table above with your name, the date you turn in the project, the school you work for, and a title for your lesson before submitting your project.

To make this task easier, you may plan your lesson over several sessions of the course, and then review and submit it in Session 6. Here is a suggested timeline for completion of the final project:

Session 1: Review requirements for final project.

Session 3: Review requirements for student interview, and identify a student that you will interview.

Session 4: Begin planning and writing your lesson plan (Steps 4, 5, and 7 below); conduct your student interview.

Session 5: Complete the write upof your student interview (Steps 1-3 below), and incorporate lessons learned from the interview into your lesson plan (Step 6 below).

Session 6: Finish writing your lesson plan (Steps 1-7 below), and submit the finished final project to your facilitator.

Student Interview

Step 1:Describe the student.
Briefly describe the student you interviewed (no last names please). Make sure you include the student’s grade and his/her strengths and weaknesses in mathematics.
Step 2: Describe the interview.
Describe the problem that you posed to the student, how you presented the problem, and his/her mathematical thinking during the interview.
What significant moments, comments, surprises, or reflections emerged from the interview? What did you learn from the interview?
Step 3: Identifying misconceptions.
Describe the misconceptions that the student had about fractions. Make sure to identify any errors that the student made, and explain what you think the errors reveal about the student’s knowledge of fractions.
1. Describe the student’s misconceptions:
2: Identify the misconception that you will target in your lesson:

Lesson Plan

Step 4: Identify the learning goals/objective.
Identify what you consider to be the important math content being taught in your lesson. What learning goals are you targeting here? At the conclusion of this lesson, what do you expect students to know about fractions?
Step 5: Describe your lesson.
Write a description of the fractions lesson you are planning. Your description should be detailed enough so that a colleague reading this plan could understand what you intend to teach, what the students will do, and how you will wrap up the lesson.
1. What fractions model are you using in this lesson?
2. How will you introduce this lesson?
3. Describe the activity that students will do in this lesson.
4. Describe your expectations for this lesson. (What concepts will students understand, and where will they have trouble?)
5. Explain how you intend to assess student understanding about fractions after this lesson.
Step 6: Addressing student misconceptions.
Explain how this lesson is informed by your student interview. Make sure to explain how this lesson targets the specific misconceptions that you are trying to address.
Step 7: Wrapping up the lesson.
Provide a list of 3 possible discussion questions that you could pose to students during the lesson. These questions should:
  • help you figure out what knowledge students have gained during the lesson; and
  • provide an opportunity for deeper student reflection about fractions.
After listing the questions, pick one question and explain what you hope to achieve by asking it.
Pick one question and explain what you hope to achieve by asking it:

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