Session 4 - Division of Fractions

Collaborative Activity #1: (15 minutes)

Focus: *MP1: Reasoning and Perseverance, MP4: Modeling, MP6: Attend to Precision, MP7: Structure 

Activity:  Collaborative Activity #1

Directions:

1. Hand out Collaborative Activity #1
2. Working independently or in groups, have students answer the questions posed in the worksheet.
3. If students are struggling with why both methods in collaborative Activity #1 work, it could be helpful to model an example.  Use the Division of Fractions Video to see the demonstration of the example model.  You can show students the video and model the example on whiteboards. 

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When monitoring students' understanding during this activity, students should notice that the answers are the same. The second student uses the algorithm for dividing with fractions. The first student divides across and gets the same answer. 

As a facilitator, you should point out that this always works because it’s a shortcut method to multiplying by the reciprocal, but the reason we don’t use this method is that the numbers don’t always divide evenly.