During the course of writing this article my intention has kept changing. It started as an ‘Ode to Jo’ (how much I love the Mindset Mathematics books and activities), then it became about the phases of learning (from Tony and Larissa during the Bastow course) and I’ve settled on how you could build a sequence of experiences to develop an understanding of fractions, percentages and decimals. Instead of one cool experience, weaving in a range of related experiences to create a sequence of learning.

Find below a menu of the experiences we used, links to the ‘Three Phases of Teaching’ (to my current understanding of them) and student samples.

Please click any of the banners to see the activities.

A phrase used often between Sam and myself is ‘relentless consistency’ from one of the Peter Sullivan research documents. While running these activities might take longer than an allocated 2 week block (I understand the pressures of getting through everything), it provides students will multiple exposures to the content through different contexts. While our focus is on fractions, decimals and percentages, I’ve found the links between other areas of mathematics enhances the experience and supports their fluency, problem solving and reasoning.

Evidence:

Mondrian Art – they used area and perimeter as an entry point.

Bedroom bonanza – money was used during the reasoning phase. eg. For every $100 you need to take away $10

Beads – using efficient counting strategies, estimation, addition of two digit numbers in order to find the total of each colour.

Reflecting over the tasks, each activity had time for students to explore, problem solve and use reasoning. Even though we explored, discussed, fish bowled and shared methods, it wasn’t enough for the majority of my students to be confident in using fractions in the new context. This has made me ponder on how many times they look like they’ve understood and

I’ve moved on instead of applying the skills again to something new?

After looking over the menu of activities with Sam, we posed the question: Could most concepts be covered using similar examples of making art, games, using money, using manipulatives like beads or rope?