If students can’t get started….
Assessing Questions:
- Which is smaller: ¾ or 4/3? How do you know?
Advancing Questions:
- How does ¾ compare to 1 – is it greater or less than 1? How do you know?
- How does 4/3 compare to 1 – is it greater or less than 1? How do you know?
- Which pieces are smaller – fourths or thirds?
If students finish early….
Assessing Questions:
- How do you know that you have shown that for all fraction pairs, the one less than 1 is closer to 1?
Advancing Questions:
- Do you think this will be true of other type of fraction pairs, like 5/7 and 7/5? Why or why not?
Whole Group Questions:
Part A:
- Who can explain how you decided where to place these two fractions on the number line? Did anyone change his/her placement after working part B? Why? What made you change your mind?
Part B:
- How did you decide which is closer to 1? What did you consider?
- By comparing only the denominators, what does that tell us? How do the size of the pieces compare? What does the numerator tell us?
- How many ¼’s do we have? How can this be expressed by repeated addition? Multiplication?
- How may 1/3’s do we have? How can this be expressed by repeated addition? Multiplication?
- How does this help us decide?
Part C:
- Do we think that what happened in part B will happen for all special fraction pairs? How could we tell? Who can share his/her thinking? What are some important things to consider in order for us to give an argument?
