My third grade team is starting their unit on fractions after the first of the year, so I’ve been checking out resources for them to use.  Our district recently purchased a wonderful book from Math Solutions titled Beyond Pizzas & Pies: 10 Essential Strategies for Supporting Fraction Sense.  I can already tell from Chapter 1 that it’s going to be a great resource for lessons that develop deep understanding.

I want to incorporate some technology into these lessons, and a great resource is the Geoboard app from The Math Learning Center.  It’s one of the many free apps they offer.  You can see from the screen shot below that students can use virtual rubber bands to create and partition figures.  The shading feature helps students visualize the fractions.

With the app downloaded on my iPad, I Googled “fractions and geoboards” to see if I could find some additional resources and activities.  The top two hits were videos from Annenberg Learner.  What an amazing website! The two videos, which each run between 6 and 7 minutes, highlight geoboards being used with a class to incorporate the Mathematical Practices of Attend to Precision and Construct Viable Arguments into a lesson on one half.  There is duplication in the two videos, but I recommend watching them both to hear the Mathematical Practices connections. NCTM President Linda Gojak speaks to the Practices in the second video.

I am so excited to see how these great resources will help our kiddos develop a deeper understanding of fractions!