We began today by discussion about what we want to praise in our classrooms and what our goals are for our students.  We watched a video about the power of praise when we are praising the effort and not the “intelligence”.  We brainstormed words we can use to do this in our classrooms.

We then continued with the study of fractions by talking about multiplying fractions in terms of the adjective noun theme (and related it to the idea of rates) and geometric representations for the multiplication.  This last topic yielded a lot of productive struggle when we jumped from proper fraction multiplication to improper fraction multiplication.  Several models were presented from the participants and we spent time at tables figuring out how they related to each other and why some did not seem to be valid.

After lunch we began the concept of division and we discussed the multiple ways of approaching it.  Before going on to the estimation topics we had each table become an expert at a particular problem from the problem set in the material.  We did a think, pair, share and then the groups created posters to represent their answers.  The presentations gave participants a chance to practice their vocabulary and mathematical reasoning and gave observers a chance to ask probing questions about the material.

The estimation page was a good way to look at ordering fractions and we worked through some issues with the list that was close to one.  The one fraction 26/51 made the pattern a challenge to find but we talked it through and came to a consensus.  Charles wrapped the section up with a discussion about inverse and the importance of not dividing by zero.

Have a great weekend.