50 Followers and Fractions...O my!

To my delightful surprise, I signed on today to see that I have reached the 50 follower mark! As all of us new bloggers (or for those who once were) know- this is a very auspicious occasion to be celebrated! I can't tell you all how much I appreciate your support! I am just jumpin in my jeans over here!

To give back to all of you and to undoubtably celebrate a bit, I believe my first GIVEAWAY, must be had! Check back tomorrow for details (and to enter of course!). Thank you ladies! I feel that I have grown so much as a teacher by being part of this wonderful, crazy, blogging world with you already!

Enough of the mushy gushy now...and on to fractions. We are wrapping up our Fraction unit this week, and my kids have been working on solving fraction number stories. Today, I thought why not amp up the fun and write some of our own. And while we are at it, lets do a literature tie-in to Dr. Seuss...after all it is his month. Thus, I present you with "Our Fish Fraction Stories", inspired by Dr. Seuss' "1 Fish, 2 Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" (or in my class "Un pez, 2 peces, pez rojo, pez azul").

We started our lesson today by reading the story and discussing the ways that Dr. Seuss used different adjectives to describe the different types of fish (and other pets) in the story. I shared with the kids that I wanted them to use this understanding to develop a "fish fraction story" involving 2 opposite types of fish. For instance, they could pick slow fish/fast fish, or skinny fish/fat fish, etc. Some of them ended up using ideas from the book, and some of them got creative. It was a great lesson in practicing adjective placement in Spanish for my Spanish language learners as well, as the adjective comes after the noun in Spanish you see. 

After the kids wrote the stories, they had to draw the picture that went along with it. Then we put all of their stories in page protectors and each kid got a Expo marker and an eraser and we had some fun! The kids left their stories at their tables and walked about the room then solving one anothers' stories. I am going to put them all in a book now so that they can use them for further practice during their independent math work time! Here are some of the finished products:

(The translated version- There are 9 fish swimming. 7 are strong and 2 are weak. What fraction of the fish are strong fish?)

(There are 9 fish swimming 3 are green and 6 are yellow. What fraction of the fish are green?)

(There are 6 fish swimming. 4 are red and 2 are yellow. What fraction of the fish are yellow?)

Cute right? (Sorry for the glare...page protectors.) I can't wait to put our book together!

Here's the freebie if you are interested! Graphics by the lovely The 3am Teacher and my friends over at Scrappin Doodles.

(No worries- it is in English too!)

Thanks again to my AMAZING followers. Don't forget to check back tomorrow for a GIVEAWAY in your honor!