Fourth graders in Ms. Cousins’ class at Davis Elementary are just beginning their fractions unit (SOL4.2), so today we used Pixie to make animations showing fractions as part of a group in order to determine their prior knowledge. The students started by drawing a picture of themselves with a set of identical objects (such as 4 cherry pies). Then they duplicated the picture (File > Duplicate Picture) and added a few more different but similar objects to the group (like 3 peach pies). They could duplicate the picture, adding more sets to the group, as many times as they wanted. Finally we added pictures at the end identifying the fraction of the group each set represented. The students added a voiceover to each picture explaining the steps. This made very clear to us which students understood the concept. For example, one student drew a picture of 2 cookies and 1 car (so we could tell he wasn’t clear on making similar sets). Then he wrote the fraction as “3 2s” (in his voiceover he said “three twos”). So that let the teacher know he probably wasn’t ready to start comparing fractions (SOL4.2) and would need some remediation. I won’t post his example, but here are some students who did understand the concept and are ready to move on: Butch, Hannah, and Sryia.
