Summer Snowflakes

It's hot and muggy outside so we decided to bring a little winter into our classroom this week! The students in my 5th grade advanced math class began their fraction unit by cutting out paper snowflakes. The students were challenged to develop strategies to estimate the portion of the paper that was cut away. We discussed why fractions are a great way to describe the amount of paper that was discarded. This exploratory activity was a great way for me, the teacher, to see how each student visualizes, investigates, and thinks through big ideas on their own.

To help the students make better estimations they pasted their snowflakes to colored paper. Many students used the scraps they cut away to help them determine their estimations. Below you can see how some students came up with a way for estimating the fraction of paper that was missing. 

 

The snowflakes and annotations were hung up for all to see. The students participated in a gallery walk. They answered the following questions about each snowflake estimation: 

• How close do you think the estimates are? Why? 
• Do you think the estimates are over or under the actual fraction that is missing?
• How could the group check their estimate to make it more precise?