Mixed Number Musical Chairs

We had so much fun working on improper fractions to mixed numbers today! Wanted to share the idea with other 5th grade teachers.

I'll fancy up this page later with TEKS, etc, but it went so well I want to put it up so you can try it too.

Started out with some work on the overhead. Had the kids draw 3 circles divided into 4 parts and color in 11/4 of them. Showed them how 4/4 + 4/4 = 8/4 not 4/4 Pretty straightforward...boring but then we started the game.

We set up to sets of 7 chairs in the center of the room and had 17 students stand around them. Stressed safe movement and no more than one person per chair. No one will have to sit down, so no need to run!
Next, I started to play a cd with a math song called "Meter Stick". It reviews the number of millimeters and centimeters in a meter. The kids began moving around the chairs. Stopped the song and 14 student got chairs. 3 left over so the mixed number with 17/7 is 2 and 3/4.
We took a chair away from each group. Started the music and stopped it after a few seconds. 12 sit down and 5 are standing, so 17/6 = 2 and 5/6.
Took a chair away from each group again, now 5 chairs in a group. Started music and they started moving, stopped music and 10 sat down. Now we had 7 students standing. One of the stronger students pointed out that we had another set of 5 so we set up another "station". Now we had 3 groups so 17/5 = 3 and 2/5.
Each time we took away a chair we did mental math to see how many sets of the divisor were in 17 and made sure we had that many stations and they had the correct number of chairs. This was IMPORTANT to expedite the lesson and make sure our results were correct.
17/4 = 4 and 1/4, 17/3= 5 and 2/3, and 17/2 = 8 and 1/2. Know you could figure that out, but want you to see that changing the denominator but keeping the same number of pieces was VERY powerful.
Some thing else that was a fortunate serendipity. I picked 17 to increase the number of kids playing and maybe at some level chose a prime number. The good thing about this was that we never had to simplify as we were playing. =) Later in the lesson, we used fractions that required simplification, but by that time, changing an improper fraction into a mixed number was a cinch!
We'll play this game again when it is close to the time for our state test to review. Too many times and older kids would probably get bored. But today we laughed and learned! Hope you will try it!

This lesson combines auditory, visual and kinesthetic learning.

This page was developed through GirlTECH '97 a teacher training and student technology council program sponsored by the Center for Research on Parallel Computation(CRPC), a National Science Foundation-funded Science and Technology Center Thanks also to the RGK Foundation for its generous support.

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Mixed Number Musical Chairs

We set up to sets of 7 chairs in the center of the room and had 17 students stand around them. Stressed safe movement and no more than one person per chair. No one will have to sit down, so no need to run!

Next, I started to play a cd with a math song called "Meter Stick". It reviews the number of millimeters and centimeters in a meter. The kids began moving around the chairs. Stopped the song and 14 student got chairs. 3 left over so the mixed number with 17/7 is 2 and 3/4.