Today we continued our work with fractions only now we are multiplying them. I started the session differently than previously. After our meeting last week about setting up our virtual classroom like a brick and mortar room, I thought I would incorporate some suggestions. One was to have something for them to work on when they enter and the other was to list the rules for them. I explained these changes to our room and the students had no problem with them.
After the housekeeping parts it was on to the actual lesson. This went extremely well. I explained to them that multiplying fractions was like looking at the problem as 2 multiplication sentences on top of one another. This really seemed to help them understand. Everyone wanted to work a problem and all did very well with this. The challenge came when we started to talk about using Mixed Numbers. Since we cannot multiply them like they are we have to convert the mixed number to an improper fraction. I demonstrated this since most of the lcass presented me with confused faces. Once I went over how to do it, they reeally caught on. We continued on to the multiplying part. In the end, I mentioned they would need to simplify the new fraction. This meant they needed to create a new mixed numbers. Since I had mentioned this last week, we reviewed how to go about it. There were some students who were still confused. I mentioned they can come back to class tomorrow when we go over everything once again.
I was very pleased with today's lessons. Once again, if they do not understand something they will not hesitate to tell me and we work it out together. They feel very comfortable with making errors and learning from them.
Til tomorrow!
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