Two weeks ago, we shared with you how a question about quantity could introduce opportunities to explore area. With this week’s image, we use the question, How many do you see? to open the door to conversations about part and whole – fractions.
When you invite students to consider how many with this image, as with many of our images, this raises the question of units. What is being counted? Students might count the tomatoes in a variety of ways, each of which can be justified with different units. Students might determine that there are:
16 tomato bits
3 whole tomatoes and 13 pieces of tomatoes
3 whole tomatoes, 11 tomato halves, and 2 smaller pieces of tomatoes
3 whole tomatoes, 11 tomato halves, and 2 tomato quarters
8 and a half tomatoes, and 2 tomato quarters
9 tomatoes
Notice that we did not need to use fraction notation to have a big conversation about wholes, halves, and quarters, and how to join them. Students in early elementary grades can begin to discuss an image like this one and grapple with the many ways we can count and describe what we see. Importantly, the units help us see that all six ways shown above to describe how many tomatoes are in this image are equivalent.
Regardless of the age of your students, try this activity with them tomorrow and see where it takes you!
To multiplicity, cheers!
Jen Munson and the multiplicity lab group
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Each week we bring you a new image and activity you can do with your students tomorrow, and we spotlight a feature of the mathematical work that we think is important for students’ learning and your teaching.
