Story shell – My wife was given a huge bag of beads from her Auntie who was have a big sort out of her spare room. I took them because they kind of looked like caterpillars and I was curious about how many there was. What are you curious about?
The student responses were: How many are there? How many of each colour?
Students are exploring fractions through counting and sorting beads.
Phase 1: Identifying the attribute
Revising – what is a fraction in the context of these beads? What is the common denominator? What is a fraction, percentage and decimal in context to these beads? What do we do if we have more than 100 beads and we’re trying to determine the percentage?
Phase 2: Learning to measure
Estimation – how many beads do you think your group has? How many do you think are blue, what percentage? How do you know?
Create fractions using your data. Eg. There are 400 beads and 42 are blue. 40/400 = 10/100, 10%
Phase 3: Learning to calculate
Posing and answering questions.
What percentage of your beads are blue? There doesn’t seem to be many white beads, what is the chance of me pulling out a white bead if they were all put into a bag?
