Sweeney, E. S., & Quinn, R. J. (Jan. 2000). Concentration: Connecting fractions, decimals, and percents. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, 5(5), 324-328.
The authors emphasized the importance of connecting mathematical ideas; mainly they wanted students to understand the relationship between fractions, decimals and percents. They noticed that students' definitions of fractions, decimals and percents lacked detail and understanding. While it was clear that all the students had studied these concepts, the students were unable to make connections between them. As a result, the authors proposed the activity, concentration, that would help the students recognize the relationship between the terms. First this activity was done as a whole class with recognizing the shaded area of a circle in terms of a fraction, decimal and percent. The class then composed a table of the different numbers according to various shaded regions. Next, the class continued building the table while expanding their ideas to a 10 by 10 geoboard. At this stage the class broke into groups of 4 and composed equivalent but individual cards with fractions, decimals and percents. At this stage, the smaller groups then played a matching game with the cards. It was through the game that the students became more excitement in the subject matter, but also appeared to be making great progress with the connection of ideas as they quickly made matches.
While the authors nicely planed and carried out the task, the timing of the task did not seem to make sense. It was clear from the beginning that the students had already studied the ideas of fractions, decimals and percents, and they were revisiting the material to make the connection. As a result, it appeared the teacher really should have made the connection earlier when the class first studied the material. It is possible that the students' lack of understanding was impeding their progress in other areas, but if that was the case it was not clear in the article. Despite the timing, it was a well thought out task. The teacher successfully accomplished the goal of having students notice the similarities between the different ideas and deepen their understanding. Furthermore, the students were engaged in the task and began to show confidence in the material, which are good signs in the classroom that the students are learning. Overall, it seemed to be a beneficial task even if the timing did not coincide.
Becca,
ReplyDeleteI love how clear your topic sentence is and how much detail you used in your first paragraph! Lots of times I always need to know more of what the article said because students hold out on their blog entries, but not yours! I loved the detail of the matching activity that was used to teach connection. One question I have is if an activity with matching would really help relational understanding of the connections between fractions, decimals, and percents, or if it was just an instrumental way for the students to memorize the connections.
Thanks for your post!
Good job writing your blog. Isn't it amazing how those process standards pop up everywhere in math ed?
ReplyDeleteWhen I started reading the last paragraph I wasn't sure where you were going or what stance you were taking. I feel that the last sentence would be your topic sentence. I think in this type of writing you want to make your points clear from the beginning.