4th Grade Task: Closer to 1

4th Grade Task: Closer to 1

Activity/Task Variations

Blooms taxonomy level: 
Understanding
Extension suggestions: 

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?