The activity that I did with the children was mostly inspired by my learning plan #1 which had a focus in math. For this activity, I used chocolate bars to represent fractions. The students had a problem which was 4 divided by 1/9 in where they were given four chocolate bars already divided up into ninths. The reason why I chose this activity was because I knew children like being able to visually see things, playing a role in real life. Many of the word problems they get in math are related to food and real objects so I thought about bringing this in, so that they could see how fractions can be seen in a chocolate bar for instance.
In the preparation for this activity I first identified that I was going to use Hershey bars since they are already divided up into even pieces and it would be easier to work with and identify the fractions evenly. Afterwards I knew Hershey bars were divided into twelfths, yet knew that would have given us a big number as an answer so I decided to cut of the 3 pieces of each bar to have the chocolate bars be in ninths. From there I had one of my numbers 1/9 then I decided I was going to work with 4 chocolate bars, and from there I created my equation which I solved myself ahead of time. I also watched many videos relating the division of fractions with actual food.
I believe something that went well was the students excitement for using chocolate also them having something to physically look at and see how fractions can be involved in that. What I noticed during the implementation of the activity was that I was leading most of it, and I was the one manipulating the pieces. Something I would definitely change about this activity was how I went about it, I would instead of writing down the equation actually creating a story problem involving chocolate, and having them kind of exploring/figuring things out on their own and having them be more hands on and able to manipulate the chocolate pieces themselves.
Education 240 