Line Plots with Fractions- Tricky Math?

Hey there!

We have been working on fractions in our 4th grade class this week.  We are sooooooo behind after having so many "snow" days.  I'm feeling the pressure.

So, I was super psyched that my friend Holly created this awesome resource for making line plots with fractions because it made my life a WHOLE lot easier!!

We used this yesterday and it was a huge hit!!  I haven't really talked a lot about line plots, but they had seen them a little last year.  So, we just jumped right in!

We did it as a class first.  I knew I wanted to use it as a center, but since we hadn't really worked with line plots, I wanted to be sure they understood it.  I think this works great as a whole group activity AND as a center!!

I put the line plot page up on the document camera.

I told them we were going to have a pizza party and we needed to earn enough for the whole class.  I had them estimate how many pizzas we would need if each pizza had 8 slices.  (This could have been a whole other lesson, but we will come back to estimation AGAIN later...we need to keep going on fractions!)

Then, we started pulling the fraction pieces out one by one to "earn" pizza for a pizza party.  As each student pulled a pizza card out, we plotted it on the line plot.

I had the students also creating their line plot on their white boards.

Once everyone had pulled a pizza card, we added up all of the fractions to determine how many pizzas we earned.

(I promise that's a paper towel that he's using to erase his board, not a tissue!!  I know it looks gross!!)

We added them all up by combining the fourths, halves, etc. and then we even drew pictures to see how to combine them into mixed numbers!!  They did really awesome at it!!  And, they had a lot of fun!!

There are a total of 40 pizza cards.  We only used the first 20 because that's how many I had that day in my math group.  The first 20 cards use fourths and halves.  The next 20 (#21-40) have fourths, halves, and eighths.  So, it can be differentiated.  The first 20 cards are easier but if you throw in the next 20, they have to really think and be able to make mixed numbers.

Today, I had it out as a center, and two of my boys worked on it together.  They were very excited to inform me that they used all 40 cards and earned 10 and 3/4 pizzas for their party!  They LOVED it!!

And, do you know what?  Lucky you!!  This product is one of the products in this amazing Tricky Math bundle that's priced at a GREAT deal on Educents right now!!

All of these amazing resources are ONLY $10.99!!!  Can you believe it???  That's a steal!!!!!  If you teach tricky math like I do, you have GOT to go check it out!  Here are some of the items included:

• Equivalent fractions
• Comparing fractions
• Building fractions
• Operations with fractions
• LCM & GCF
• Multiplying and dividing decimals
• Multiplication of single and multi-digit whole numbers
• Line Plots
• Word Problems
• Real life situations

So, if you have to teach some tricky math, I highly recommend that you go check out this bundle!  You cannot beat the price, I promise you!!!

And, if you don't know what educents is (it's like a groupon or like a deal on Jane.com!) then you can click here to check it out and sign up for it!

I'm also linking up with my good friend Jessica for her Tricky Math Workshop Wednesday!

How do YOU teach tricky math?