Narrative Advantages And Disadvants In First Grade

Students learn fractions much earlier than the average person expects. In today’s American education system, children are officially introduced to fractions in first grade. Children use fractions frequently in everyday life and in academics too. A website called, “Math Warehouse Lesson Plans,” provides a lesson plan about teaching fractions to first graders. This lesson plan can easily relate to an article written by the National Counsel of Teachers called, “Common Core brief: The fraction progression.” The lesson begins with the teacher holding two apples in front of the class. She asks them, “I want to divide these apples between two students, how many apples does each student get?” The students will reply by saying each child gets one apple. The teacher will then show the students only one apple and ask how to divide one apple between two students (“Fractions”). They will say to cut the apple in half and each student gets half of the apple. She will cut the apple into two equal parts and explain these are called “halves.” Next, the teacher will ask the class how to divide the apple so four students get an equal portion of one apple. After the children collaborate with their classmates, they should tell her to cut the apple in half again and get four pieces. She will cut the apple in half again to get four equal pieces and explain four pieces are called, “quarters” (“Fractions”). For the main part of the lesson, the students will receive Play Dough. The teacher will demonstrate how to shape the Play Dough into a rectangle and instruct the students to do the same. Once they have done this, the teacher will ask them to divide the rectangle into two equal parts. They will divide the rectangle in half and the teacher will observe the students as they do so (“Fractions”). Next, the teacher will ask the class questions, such as, “How many parts are there?” and “What is …show more content…
These examples were both skill problems and application problems. The first skill problem was when the students split the rectangle in halves and quarters. This rectangle is just a shape to students and they are not comparing it to other rectangular shapes around the classroom. The second skill problem was when the students formed their Play Dough into a lump. This is a skill-based example, because the students are focusing on the skill of splitting an object and not applying it to the real world. Next, the first skill-based problem was when the teacher showed the students an object that looks like a pizza and the students mimic the shape with their Play Dough. The students relate this pizza to the real world by thinking about sharing a pizza with their family for dinner. The teacher demonstrated the second skill-based example. This was when the teacher had two apples and shared one whole apple with two students. Then, the class had to split one apple between two students. The last part of this example was when the class decided to cut the apple into quarters to split the apple equally between four students. This is an application problem because the students are applying fractions to the real world by thinking about how they would share the apple in this