Fair Shares!

Dear Family,

Our class is starting a unit on fractions, called Fair Shares. Your child will be using fractions to make "fair shares" of things like paper "brownies" and pattern-block "cookies."

By working with these materials, your child will learn about how "wholes" come apart into fractions and how fractions fit together as wholes. We'll talk about which of two shares is larger and which fractions are really the same (for example, 1/3 is the same as 2/6).

Here are some ways you can help at home:

* When your family really is sharing food, talk about "fair shares" and help your child name fractions. If you want to split the pizza among five people, how can you split it fairly? How much does each person get?

*Cooking is another great way to learn about fractions. How can we measure 3/4 cup? Look together at how the fractions appear on a measuring cup. Doubling recipes, or cutting them in half, can help your child understand how to make new numbers with fractions.


Throughout the unit, please look over your child's homework. Ask about the fraction work the class is doing, and encourage your child to explain some of the problems to you. The purpose of this unit is for students to visualize and compare fractions, to find different combinations of fractions to make a whole, to learn which common fractions are equivalent, and to begin to use fractions to solve problems like this one:

Six people at a party shared all the cookies evenly. Each person ate 1 and 1/3 cookies. How many cookies did they eat!?

Thank you for your support and interest in your child's mathematics.