My kids can : making math accessible to all learners, K–5

WORKINGCOLLABORATIVELY

While I was assessing Jhali’s work in my classroom, Diane was assessing how
Jhali was articulating her ideas in the pullout group. To be sure that we had the
same learning goals in mind, I asked Diane to focus her assessments on:

• whether Jhali’s limited use and understanding of the vocabulary associated
  with fraction concepts was hindering her understanding and her ability to
  express the ideas she did understand


• how consistent Jhali was with her explanations of how she was comparing
  fractions


• whether or not Jhali was using vocabulary such as numerator, denominator,
  whole, greater than,andless thanin ways that were consistent with her
  strategies for comparing fractions

I knew that the words numeratoranddenominatorwere not making sense to
Jhali in the abstract and that we needed to talk about fractions in the context of
representations. Based on our assessments, Diane and I developed a plan for work-
ing with Jhali, both in the small pullout group and in the regular classroom, that
incorporated some of the same representations we were using in class. The fol-
lowing is an excerpt from our initial planning conversation.

MARTA: I’ve noticed that Jhali is using the terms denominatorandnumera-

torcorrectly, but I am not certain that she understands how those parts of a

fraction are related. When I ask her to describe a fraction such as , she says

things like “the denominator is bigger ’cause it is 5, but then the 3 is going

to be smaller but the numerator is going to make it bigger.”

DIANE: We’ve worked a lot on vocabulary. Here, I brought her folder

with the cards and pictures we have made, but I think we have a lot more

work to do on what a fraction is. Maybe she can work on drawing more

models.

MARTA: Yes, I think it’s helpful that you’ve worked with Jhali on these

terms so that she can follow our class discussions when those terms are used.

3

5

Figure 22–1.