Last spring, I was placed in a fifth grade math classroom at Imagine Clay Charter School in Toledo. This placement was very rewarding because I had the opportunity to work one-on-one and in small groups with students. One day before class my placement teacher, Mr. Troupe, told me that he had a student that was struggling to understand dividing a whole number by a fraction and that I would be working with that student during class time. At this time the students had been learning this concept for quite a while so I was confident about making progress with this particular student, so when class started I took the student to the breakout room to begin the lesson. I started out the lesson by reviewing some key concepts about dividing a whole number by another whole number.
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We went through two word problems and did some examples with manipulatives. Once I was confident he understood vision of whole numbers we moved on to dividing a whole number by a fraction. The first problem was five divided by one-third I used a number line technique to work through the first problem with him. First on the chalk board we made a number line zero through five. Next, I explained that since we are dividing by one-third we need to split the number line into thirds, so I asked the student to come up and do that. Finally, I talked with the student about what the question was asking; How many one-thirds are there in five? The student then went up to the board and counted how many one-thirds there were on the number line and he responded 15. We went through a few more problems similar to this one but we instead of the number line approach we did the bar approach. This means the
We went through two word problems and did some examples with manipulatives. Once I was confident he understood vision of whole numbers we moved on to dividing a whole number by a fraction. The first problem was five divided by one-third I used a number line technique to work through the first problem with him. First on the chalk board we made a number line zero through five. Next, I explained that since we are dividing by one-third we need to split the number line into thirds, so I asked the student to come up and do that. Finally, I talked with the student about what the question was asking; How many one-thirds are there in five? The student then went up to the board and counted how many one-thirds there were on the number line and he responded 15. We went through a few more problems similar to this one but we instead of the number line approach we did the bar approach. This means the