Reducing Fractions

This shot is from the end of the lesson where we squeeze in a couple of problems in Algebra, he factors a couple of polynomials.  It's fun and easy and a nice break from "all the fractions stuff."

This lesson brought home the point that multiplication makes ALL the other math easier because it allows you to count very quickly. You can do these problems without having multiplication facts down but it sure takes longer.  Little kids who only have the ability to count should still be exposed to these concepts but the problems should be smaller and easier to count. 

The concept of one, common factors, and equivalent fractions and multiplication and division are all bundled up into one here and should be deconstructed for the student so they can see each part and how it goes together.



 This video covers the hour lesson from start to finish. We start with all 45 addends, move to multiplication mostly just to see his progress, and we do a little subtraction, he asks for help with fractions and so we do some and then end with algebra again  the hour flies by.  This vid is packed with concept rich content.

You may notice that we discuss the basic concepts in passing as we go along. This is a longer video and I've found many people won't watch it as soon as they see the time. If you have children who are learning fractions concepts you may want to take the time at some point to show them this video as they will SEE the common factor and why it is that "as we do above so we do below."  Rather than just giving the rule of dividing both the numerator and denominator by the same number.  We we move on to more complex algebraic fractions the concept remains the same. 

My fractions page is still in disarray but you can find links and more vids there too, plus some PDF's, people seem to want fractions worksheets and I need to get more made, but there are a few there right now.

Find me on Facebook, and Twitter and you might want to subscribe to my Youtube channel as many videos go there that don't make it here.  You can find sessions that I document for parents and such.  On the entire internet there is only one Crewton Ramone.  Also now you can usually easily find follow up vids if you notice the P1 in front of the tittle...just go to the password pages and look for P2 and P3 with identical titles.

Improper Fractions

Improper Fractions are easy to understand, if you have some one who can explain it in a way that you can understand.

"No concept is beyond the child if it is explained at the child's level."

This lesson can go a lot of ways, it can be a fractions lesson, it can be combined with a measurement lesson, it can be in introduction to more fractions concepts, it can be an introduction to algebra concepts, it can be a lesson on division and multiplication....in the video I was accompanied by a peanut gallery consisting of a 4 and 5 year old and the lesson was for an Autistic child so I kept it simple and we did fractions, measurement and multiplication and division....but above all all we did was COUNT and that's the way we always start.

The fraction has the what kind part and the how many part all in one place, the top tells how numerous the numerator and the bottom tells d'nom, the nom, the name of it: the denominator.   When the denominator is bigger than the numerator we call this an improper fraction because there are whole numbers hiding in there...our job is to find out how many. Let's start with 7/2 = ?

 It's easy for the student to count how many twos are contained in 7 or to measure 7 with 2's.  They can see that we are counting 2's and there are four of them of them...but wait we only can count THREE whole ones and we use a part of the fourth one, one out of two parts and we call that one half...

 In this problem we ended up using 3 of 6 and so we did a couple of lesson on reducing fractions.  There are several ways to explain it.

 We can look at the relationship, it's one to two, one three on top two three's on the bottom.

 We can expose the common factor of three by turning them on their sides, and counting the edges 1 x 3 / 2 x 3  and see 3/3 is ONE.

 We can still see the ratio of one to two if we look.  You need to do many problems like this for them to be able to do these easily but start off small so they get the CONCEPTS under their belt first.

Here is a short vid explaining these concepts with comments and button pushing by the four year old:



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