Open House Bulletin Boards: Learning is Sweet (Fraction Sundaes)

Last Friday my class made Fraction Sundaes.  By far, Fractions were the toughest math concept for my students to grasp this year.  In fact, for this project I had to simplify the directions even more than what Runde's Room had mentioned.  Ha ha - get it?  Simplify...

Basically, here are the steps I used:

1.  I gave my students the template from Runde.  I had printed one out and drew lines on the template before I copied it to add a name line, and 5 lines underneath.  Her template has the bowl and some ice cream scoops on it.  Some of my students saved the scoops to use as templates.  

2.  The students chose 4 ice cream flavors and wrote them on the lines 

underneath their names on the right hand side.  

3.  Then we came up with different ways to make 10, and they decided how many scoops of each type of ice cream to make - but it had to equal a total of 10 scoops.  These numbers went on the far left side of each ice cream line.

4.  Then we added our denominator /10 to each line to complete the fractions and had a discussion reminding them how to simplify the fractions.  They added the simplified fractions to each line (if possible).  On the very bottom line on the template we added "10 total scoops".

5.  Then it was craft time.  I had them glue their dishes to a blue half sheet of construction paper, and we cut out 2 triangles on each side to still make a dish shape.  Yes, there was a discussion how these triangles were right & scalene...  

6.  We cut out all 10 ice cream scoops using a basket of old construction paper.

7.  After all 10 of their scoops were cut, I had them glue them on from the bottom up.  We talked about putting the colors in the way they wanted them displayed - some wanted to make a pattern, some wanted a random assortment.  I told them to think a bowling pin pattern to glue the scoops down.    

4 scoops were glued to the bowl.

Then 3,

Then 2, 

Then 1.  

Then my students asked it they could add a little cherry on the top, so I cut out about 1 inch circles that some of them wanted to add.  

They turned out really nice.  I love the colors on the board.  :)

Have a great day!