Lesson Topic: Tangrams and Fractions Grade level: 7

Materials/Equipment Needed:

• Tangram pieces (enough sets for groups of two)
• Power point
• Paper outline of outside tangram shape

Objectives

Students will be able to examine pieces of tangrams and discover its relationships to fractions of a whole.

Introduction

There will be a warm up of 2 problems about parts of a whole on the board as a review and a prerequisite of the lesson.  We will display our objective on the PowerPoint as they are doing the warm-up and read through it once every student has finished the warm-up. We will lead into the body of our lesson by telling the students that the warm-up will relate to the class assignment. 

Body

• We will display, on the PowerPoint, the picture of the geometric pieces and ask the students if they think the pieces can create a perfect square.
• We will explain what their task for the day will be and what we will be doing to accomplish the task. 
• We will hand out the Tangram pieces to the students (in pairs)
• As the students are working, walk around the classroom and give positive reinforcement or hints to the students.
• If they get stuck, pose questions to get them to think about what they are doing with the pieces. (ie. With all the geometric shapes you have, how large do you think this square will have to be?)
• While walking around the room we will ask students what fractional part of the square certain pieces are based on the outline of the finished shape.

Conclusion

After allowing ample time for students to work on solving the tangram shape, we will regroup, asking students to stop what they are doing, and come together to compare their results.  We will display the multimedia solution to the tangram so all students understand how the pieces fit together.  To tie in our objective we will explain to the students how the two biggest pieces of the tangram make up fractional parts (¼ and ¼ which make up ½ the square). 

Assessment

For homework, students will have to finish finding the fractional parts of the tangram and have their solutions ready for the next class period.  They also need to show how all of the fractional parts create a whole when added together.

See Analysis of Lesson Taught to Class