Teaching Fractions

 One aspect of math that I had the most difficulty learning was that of fractions. To  be more specific adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing inequivalent fractions. When these types of problems are in decimal form I have a much easier time but for some reason I have difficulty finding ways to do it in fraction form. Given that I am currently student teaching in a 3rd grade classroom, I took the opportunity to perform this weeks post on learning more about solving math problems with fractions with like denominators in a way that I could transfer what I learn to teaching it to children as well. 

I started with identifying the standards:

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.3.NF.A.3
Explain equivalence of fractions in special cases, and compare fractions by reasoning about their size.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.3.NF.A.3.A

Understand two fractions as equivalent (equal) if they are the same size, or the same point on a number line.

I then found some resources that would be useful for students:

IXL-

https://www.ixl.com/math/grade-3/add-and-subtract-fractions-with-like-denominators

https://www.ixl.com/math/grade-3/add-and-subtract-fractions-with-like-denominators-word-problems

Gizmo-

https://gizmos.explorelearning.com/index.cfm?method=cResource.dspDetail&ResourceID=1012

https://gizmos.explorelearning.com/index.cfm?method=cResource.dspDetail&ResourceID=1027

After exploring these resources, it helped me to get a better visual of how children of this age group should be seeing these problems now that I better understand it. Sometimes taking a second look through the eyes of the students and going into learning something as if it were your first time can help you to see a solution that makes sense to students more clearly.