FROM SHARING EQUALLY TO FRACTIONS

Dra. Grecia Gálvez P.

Ministry of Education. Chile.

This paper addresses the current situation of mathematics education in Chile and a
strategy developed by an University and the Ministry of Education to improve
learning in the first four years of the primary school. A comparison is made between
the 2006 version of this strategy and Lesson Study, as a whole-school research model.
It concludes with a description of a didactic unit for the fourth year of primary
school. This is an introductory unit to the study of fractions. A videotape of a lesson
from this unit is analyzed.
Primary School and Mathematics Education in Chile.
The Chilean educational system has changed substantively since the 1990’s 1 . The
national budget has increased significantly, as well as the wages of the teachers, the
resources for making learning accessible to more students and the measures of social
support to students. School infrastructure has improved, the school working time has
been extended and the curriculum has been modernized.

Nevertheless, the transformation of the pedagogical practices has been insufficient

with respect to what was expected from the curricular reform. There have been
advances in the adoption of more active working strategies and in the incorporation of
familiar contexts for students, but it has been observed that these activities are not
clearly oriented towards specific learnings, the use of time is barely effective and the
classes are weakly structured and planned. These limitations are related to the fact
that teachers have to spend 75% of their working time in the classroom.

At the end of the fourth year of primary education, all students in the country take a
test in language, mathematics and science. The results of this test have not improved
significantly in the last (how many?) years, and a large gap remains between the
performance of children of more underprivileged sectors and those that have greater
economic and socio-cultural resources.

To correct this inequity, it was deemed necessary to improve the professional

development of teachers of the first primary cycle (four years), helping them to

1
The information outlined here is taken from: Orientaciones para el Nivel de Educación Básica 2004 -
2005, official document of the Ministry of Education.

49
 understand and to implement the new curriculum in mathematics and language; these
areas are considered essential to support the rest of school learning. In this context,
the Ministry of Education and the University of Santiago de Chile have developed a
strategy to support schools in the mathematics curriculum implementation. This
strategy aims to improve the educational practices workshops at each school for first
cycle teachers, along with support and feedback to the educational activity in the
classroom (Gálvez, 2005).
The strategy was implemented in 20 schools in 2003 and expanded to 224 schools in
2004 and 2005. Since 2006 it has been redesigned as LEM communal workshops in
mathematics. In this modality, each workshop brings together teachers from two to
five schools belonging to the same commune (district), with the purpose of widening
coverage to 650 schools, and it will be certified as a training activity, in order to
ensure the regular attendance of the teachers. However, there is a risk of weakening
the generation of institutional conditions in each school, for the installation and
permanence of the changes achieved in teacher’s practices.

Lesson Study and Lem Communal Workshops of Maths.

A parallel between Lesson Study (LS) in its whole-school research model version and
the Strategy to Support Schools in the Mathematics Curriculum Implementation
developed in Chile, in its LEM Communal Workshops of Mathematics version
(LCW) is presented in the following table.

According to Yoshida (2005), the According to the Terms of Reference elaborated by the
steps that encompass a lesson Ministry of Education of Chile (2005) LEM Communal
study cycle are: Workshops (LCW) are characterized by:

The process begins with defining a The process arises as an initiative of the Ministry of
broad, school-wide research Education to improve teacher training in order to
theme. implement the new curriculum in the first cycle of primary
education (four years).

All the teachers of first cycle from two to five schools of a

Teachers form lesson planning
commune register in a Communal Workshop in which
teams and select a lesson study
they will work during a year in mathematics and the
goal.
following one in language, or vice-versa.

Ministry and Universities collaborate to produce written

and audio-visual materials and to perform assistance
The team invites an outside expert activities for the whole process of teaching organization in
to support them. each school, through a consulting teacher, enabled by the

50
 Ministry and Universities specialists in charge of the
development of the Strategy.

The team selects a unit, and within

Under the supervision of the consulting teacher, the
that unit, selects a lesson topic.
teachers of each Workshop make weekly sessions of study
Members of the team write a
of the didactic units produced by a central team. This team
lesson plan based upon research of
has selected nuclear learning from the study plan and has
the topic, instructional materials,
written four units for each course. Each unit is a proposal
and their knowledge of student
of approximately five classes, mathematically and
thinking and learning.
didactically grounded, so that the teacher can lead a
learning process in the classroom.
One member of the team teaches All the teachers who participate in the Workshop put into
the research lesson while fellow practice the proposal contained in the didactic units four
teachers and other observers times during a school year. Some of these classes are
collect data on student learning observed by the consulting teacher or by the technical
and thinking. chief of each School (academic director). They can also be
videotaped.

The team discusses the lesson The consulting teacher organizes feedback workshops
during a discussion session. (devolution), both at school and communal levels, in
which the classes are discussed and analysed.

The lesson is refined for the next The authors of the unit collect information through the
follow- in process in order to reformulate the didactic units
teaching. Then the “teach - discuss
in their next versions.
- refine” cycle repeats.
Teachers who participate in the workshop are evaluated
through tests to determine the progress of their
At year-end the lesson planning mathematical and didactic knowledge during the year. The
team compiles a report on the consulting teachers are also evaluated by means of tests
findings and outcomes of their but, in addition, they have to write a proposal report for
research. teacher training.

Both LS and LCW are oriented to develop teacher knowledge across activities that
lead to the improvement of teaching and learning in the classroom, to a better
understanding of student thinking and to generate in teachers the need towork in a

51
collaborative way. In LS this process is named "professional learning", whereas LCW
refers to it as "professional development" or as "teacher’s training".

In both models it has been difficult to explain to the administration of the educational
system the principal purpose of the work that is proposed to teachers.

With regard to LS, we can mention Wang-Iverson and Yoshida (2005):

The term lesson study, translated from the Japanese jugyokenku, has led to the
myth that it means studying and improving a lesson until it is perfect (page 152).
It is not easy to garner support for a long term effort designed to produce deep but
incremental improvement from a district office under the pressure to rapidly raise
test scores (page 40).
In relation to LCW, a document signed by an authority of the Ministry of Education,
"Unsolved Problems and Proposals in Primary Education" (Sotomayor, 2006) states:

It is necessary to produce didactic units for the whole year, once we have the
model LEM. In the course of two years the whole school year must be covered,
both in language and in mathematics, from Kinder to Fourth Grade (page 2).
The promoters of both strategies, in contraposition to the mentioned statements,
consider as an instance of professional learning the work that teachers make in the
cycle, comprising:

• planning (with the support of the didactic units, in the case of LCW)
• implementing and observing
• discussing and reflecting (devolution, for LCW)

In relation to LS, we mention again Wang-Iverson and Yoshida (2005):

Lesson study is the core process of professional learning that Japanese teachers use
to continually improve the quality of the educational experiences they provide to
their students… It played a key role in transforming teaching from the traditional
“teaching as telling” to “student cantered approach to learning” (page 3).
Lesson study is a form of long-term teacher- led professional learning… and then
use what they learn about student thinking and hatsumon (asking a question to
stimulate student curiosity and thinking) to become more effective instructors
(page 152).
With regard to LCW, in several documents in which the strategy is described, we
find:

On studying the didactic units, to implement them and carry out its later analysis,
the teachers experiment and think about their own practice, extend and deepen
their own mathematical knowledge living even successive fails, they value their
children’s possibilities of learning and they progress in the appropriation of a

52
 methodology to plan, to manage and to evaluate productive processes of
mathematical learning. (Espinoza, 2006)
Teachers use the didactic and mathematic tools acquired in the communal
workshop to analyze the process (of teaching in the classroom) and the learning of
the children (Espinoza, 2006).
A last dimension in which we are interested comparing LS and LCW is related to the
participation of external agents on the teacher’s team.

In LS the team invites an external expert to “collaborate with them to enhance content
knowledge, guide the thinking about student learning and support the team’s work”
(Wang-Iverson and Yoshida, 2005, page 4). In this case, the expert provides his own
theoretical frame.

In LCW we are working based on a specific theoretical approach (Chevallard, 1999).

This approach considers the mathematical activity as the study of articulated problem
fields. The lessons proposed in the didactic units are planned based on some outcome
learning that have been selected from the national curriculum.

It is necessary to identify the mathematical tasks involved in these learning, which are
presented to the students in the shape of problems. The techniques they will use
spontaneously to explore the problematic situation are anticipated. Children will be
allowed to make mistakes and stimulated to look for ways of overcoming them, on
their own responsibility.

Along the sequence of classes the mathematical task, or its conditions of

accomplishment, are modified in order to let the pupils experiment the need to find
new techniques. By means of collective discussions they identify, among the
techniques that emerge, the most effective ones. These techniques are practiced
repeatedly, to generalize their appropriation in the classroom.

The problem that arises is the one of justifying the functioning of the recently adopted
techniques, and then it becomes necessary to make explicit and to give a name to the
underlying mathematical knowledge.

The sequence of lessons culminates with a systematization of the new knowledge,

which is related to the previously acquired learning.

A Didactic Unit for the Learning of Fractions

The didactic unit that was used to plan the lesson that we will analyze later in the
paper was designed for the Fourth Year of the Primary School. It is called:
"Comparing the results of equitable and exhaustive distributions of fragmentable
objects" (Espinoza and others, 2005).

53
The core learning of this unit is to acquire the idea that fractions are numbers that
make possible the quantification of quantities in situations in which the natural
numbers turn out to be insufficient.

The purposes of this didactic unit are to: (1) establish the need of the fractions as
numbers, (2) relate the study of fractions to that of division in the field of natural
numbers, and (3) extend the exploration, in order to compare fractions that result from
distributions of objects of the same form and size.
The chosen context is the equitable and exhaustive distribution of a set of
fragmentable objects (chocolate bars) among a group of people (children). The
problem is to quantify the part that is distributed equally to each child. In this case,
the fractions emerge when the number of objects to distribute is not a multiple of the
participants' number. A second problem is to compare the quantities given to each
participant in two different distributions. In this case, the object of the study is the
order property in the field of the fractional numbers.

The didactic strategy consists of generating four lessons, with each lesson 90 minutes
in length, in which a mathematical task is proposed to the students under different
conditions, with the aim that the sequence of situations promotes the evolution of
their knowledge.

The fundamental mathematical task is to quantify the result of an equitable and

exhaustive distribution of fragmentable objects. The objects are square or rectangular,
and they can be represented by pieces of paper.

The conditions of the distribution are [are the following conditions presented to
students as unknowns, or is the following description for the benefit only of the
reader?]:

• In the first class 1 object is distributed among p people, having p equal to

2, 4 or 8.
• In the second class n objects are distributed among p people, having n < p
and p equal to the quantities of the first class, adding 3 and 6.
• In the third class n objects are distributed among p people, having n > p
and p equal to the quantities of the second class.
• In the fourth class the relation between n and p can be anyone.

In connection to the techniques, in the first class they divide the paper that represents
the object by mean of folds and cuts and write how much each person receives, using
the fractional notation. Since they only can obtain unitary fractions, a second
mathematical task is proposed to compare unitary fractions that correspond to the

54
same object (a whole) distributed among different quantities of persons. Using
techniques of visual inspection or overlapping the pieces of paper, they conclude that
when the number of persons increases, the size of the part that each one receives
diminishes. They deduce a criterion for the comparison of unitary fractions.

In the second class they also use the techniques of dividing by mean of folds and cuts
but they already begin to anticipate the result of a distribution by means of reasoning:
to distribute 3 objects among 4 persons each object is divided into 4 equal parts and
you give 1/4 to each person. Since there are 3 objects, each person will receive 1/4 +
1/4 + 1/4, or ¾ [if students are just beginning to learn about fractions, how do they
know how to add them already?]. This time, the task of comparing results of
distributions appears as a comparison of fractions with the same numerator. For
instance, the distribution of 2 chocolates among 4 persons and among 6 persons leads
to the comparison of 2/4 with 2/6, which comes down to comparing 1/4 with 1/3,
applying the criterion formulated in the first class.

In the third class, since n > p, we can expect the following:

• they distribute complete objects first, or that they make the division n:p
and, when they obtain the rest (r) lower than p, they use the techniques of
the first or of the second class, according to r = 1, or > 1. The result of the
distribution will be a natural number (the whole quocient of n:p) plus a
fraction less than 1 (r/p)
• they use the same techniques of the second class: to anticipate that it is
possible to divide every object into as many parts as people. In this case
the result of the distribution will be a fraction higher than 1, called also
"improper" (n/p).

In the fourth class they will put into practice the same techniques used in the previous
classes, since the tasks and their conditions are the same.
Analysis of an Observation of the Third Class.
The class 2 was conducted in May, 2005 by a teacher who was taking a course named
"Curricular Appropriation" on Fractions, Decimals and Proportionality, at the University
of Santiago de Chile. This course was taught by the team of authors of the didactic units
LEM. As an assignment, this teacher had to design a didactic unit based on the structure
of the LEM units. Since she was working with fourth grade students, she asked for
authorization to put into practice the unit of fractions that we have described. Before

2
This class, observed from its record in video, is described in the Appendix.

55
beginning, she had several interviews with one of her teachers in order to better
understand the logic of this unit.
In the initial moment of this class, the teacher illustrates the mathematical tasks that
the pupils carried out in the previous two classes: share of a rectangular object among
p people and of n objects among p people, with n < p. She uses folding techniques
without exposing them. She emphasizes the results and the fractional notation: 1/4
and 3/4.

In the central moment of the lesson, the teacher proposes a case where n is a multiple
of p. In this case, the problem is solved by division with no remainder, and the result
is greater than 1.

The mathematical work of the pupils then follows. This is announced by writing the
problem in the blackboard and labelling it as a "challenge". It is a question of a case
where n > p and n is not a multiple of p.

The children work in teams of four. They have squares of paper, which they can
manipulate in order to express their reasoning. Both the children and the teacher use
only the folds, not the cuts, as they work with the papers that represent the objects that
need to be distributed among the students. This can be due to the fact that the folds
turn out to be sufficient to understand the mechanics and the result of the
distributions, but we also can assume a matter of economy in the use of the material,
so it can be reused.

During the sharing of ideas, the teacher contrasts the results of two techniques used by
the pupils where both of them are correct:

• To distribute first the whole numbers according to the model of division

of natural numbers and to divide the objects corresponding to the rest, so
that the distribution is complete. The result is registered as a whole
number plus a fractional number less than 1. To distribute the rest, if this
one is 1, they use the technique used in the first class, and if it is different
from 1, they use the technique corresponding to the second class.
• To divide each object in p equal parts and to assign to each person as
many parts as there are objects, that is, n parts. The result is registered as
n/p.

The teacher focuses the group discussion on the question whether the results are or
aren’t equivalent, without addressing the techniques used by the pupils. In the case of

56
erroneous techniques (to divide every object in n equal parts), she listens to its
description but she does not comment on them.

Referring to the objects that are supposedly going to be distributed, both the teacher
and the children use the attribute of "whole numbers", for they are complete, not yet
fragmented. The same term is used during other moments to designate the result of a
distribution as "2 wholes plus 1/4". In the latter case, the word "whole number"
alludes to a property of number 2, which distinguish it from the second term of the
sum, which would be a "fraction". A slide takes place between both meanings, which
may facilitate the comprehension of the "whole" term as an attribute of a number, due
to the analogy between "2 whole numbers" and "2 whole bars of chocolate", but later
on it will be necessary distinguish between the two statements.

As they each receive a worksheet, the children continue working in teams. The first
task consists of a distribution of n among p, where n is a multiple of p. The division
between natural numbers, as a resource to carry out this task, should have been
learned before the study of this unit. Nevertheless, some children who try to divide
with pencil and paper don’t manage to reproduce the learned skill. On the other hand,
the technique of distribution of n objects among p delimited spaces used by other
children, though slow and rudimentary (they distributed one by one), turns out to be
successful.
The second task on the worksheet consists of a distribut ion of n among p, and where
n < p. Before determining the result of the distribution, as in the previous task, the
teacher asks the children to guess if the result will be more or less than 1.

During the sharing of ideas after completing worksheet, the teacher considers the
intervention of a pupil who says that in the first task it is necessary to do a division.
We warn again that she emphasizes the result of the division, without specifying the
techniques used to obtain it.

In responding to the second task, a pupil replies that they divided the n objects in
halves, they distributed 1/2 to every p and what remained was divided in halves (1/4)
and also distributed. The teacher listens attentively to this statement, but she does not
comment on it.

In general terms, it should be noted that during this class the teacher generates
working spaces in which she allows different techniques to emerge in the hands of the
pupils, but at the moment of summarizing the achievement, she focuses the discussion
on the obtained results, instead of on an analysis of the used techniques.

57
During the closing moment, carried out during additional time corresponding to the
playtime, the conclusions boil down to if the result of a distribution is more or less
that 1, as n is more or less than p, leaving out other different, possible conclusions of
the work made in this class.
Testimony of the Teacher that Conducted the Class.
In an interview held four months later, this teacher referred to her learning in the
course of "Curricular Appropriation" and, especially, to her experience of having put
into practice the didactic unit on fractions:

In the LEM units the planning comes very well constructed. Nonetheless, one has
to work. It is not just a matter of copy. One has to study the unit to know what step
is going to be given, what work is going to be done, and to adapt it to the reality of
one’s course. The unit of fractions helped me to raise another type of problems to
my pupils. And they could solve them. The unit served me as a guide, because one
can have an immense castle but if one does not work well, it could crumble down.
I learned to have a clear notion of the task, the mathematical task that is going to
be made by the child. When the task remains diffuse, the child loses time because
she or he does not know what he or she is going to do. If the teacher clearly
understands the task, the child does not lose time.
I learned to give the children more work space during the class. I am enchanted by
the way at which I work now, because the children are eager to participate. It is not
important if they are wrong. If they are wrong I leave them, during a suitable time.
Or they continue to work on the problem at home .
I have now a passionate interest about the things that children say. With the unit, I
could work by other ways and means, and watch what happens with the pupils.
The children get enthusiastic, they think. They can draw conclusions, and they feel
comfortable when they do it. They go back and advance, in agreement to what they
have concluded previously. They are discovering things. They value the opinion of
their classmates.
I wouldn’t be able to return and give the classes the way I did before. They were so
boring, so square. I was imposing the learning. Everything was given, was made.
In fractions you had to show them the little cake, the little apple. This is a 1/2, I
wrote, without opening up possibilities for them to think, to go further.
The implementation of a didactic unit means more work. But eventually it is less
work, because the children learn more. They realize by themselves that 1/2 is equal
to 2/4. They like to work with the fractions, relate them to other topics. I feel that
they have learned.

Conclusions
The comparative analysis between Lesson Study and LEM Communal Workshops
leads to the conclusion that both are powerful strategies to improve the educational

58
practice and, at the same time, to generate processes of professional learning for
teachers, which guarantee a higher stability of the changes achieved in their
performance, with regard to other strategies.
One of the principal differences between Lesson Study and LEM Communal
Workshops is that Lesson Study assumes a higher degree of autonomy of the
teachers’ team who work together, with regard to external experts. Thus, in the model
of Lesson Study it corresponds to the teachers to choose the topic that they will work
on and to plan a class. In LEM Communal Workshops, the teachers receive a quite
well structured proposal of planning, which corresponds to a sequence of several
classes. On the basis of this proposal, the teachers organize brief processes of study
that culminate with a test to evaluate what the pupils have learned.
In this paper we provide evidence that indicates that teachers who use the LEM
didactic units, after having studied them together with other colleagues, are able to
manage their classes in a different way from the habitual one, opening spaces in order
that their pupils carry out mathematical work during the class and take part in the
construction of knowledge that correspond to their study plan.
However, in the extent which the teachers appropriate the mathematical tools and
didactics contained in the LEM strategy, they are acquiring a higher grade of
autonomy in their daily planning work. Paradoxically, the study, application and later
commentary of very specific proposals, contained in the didactic units, lead the
teachers to advance in a process of appropriation of what is necessary for them not
"not to impose the knowledge on the pupils" and "to give them space in order that
they work in the classroom, make mistakes, think and draw conclusions, " as reported
by the teacher whose class we have analyzed.

References
Chevallard, Y. (1999). L’analyse des practique enseignantes en théorie
anthropologique du didactique. Recherches en Didactique des Mathématiques.
19(2), 221-266.
Espinoza, L. y otros (2005). Comparando el resultado de repartos equitativos y
exhaustivos de objetos fraccionables. 4° Año Básico. Campaña Lectura Escritura
Matemátic a, MINEDUC – USACH. Chile. Documento de circulación interna.
Espinoza, L. (2006) ¿Qué es una Unidad Didáctica? Talleres Comunales LEM.
Presentación en: http://lem.usach.cl
Gálvez, G. (2006). Beginning the study of the additive field. Proceedings of APEC-
Tsukuba International Conference “Innovative Teaching Mathematics through
Lesson Study”. January 15-20, 2006. Tsukuba Journal of Educational Study in
Mathematics. Vol. 25. Tokyo, Japan.

59
Ministerio de Educación de Chile, División de Educación General. (Actualización
2005). Orientaciones para el Nivel de Educación Básica 2004 – 2005,
Ministerio de Educación de Chile, División de Educación General. (Diciembre,
2005). Términos de Referencia Proyecto: Talleres Comunales LEM. Documento
de circulación interna.
Sotomayor, C. (2006). Nivel de Educación Básica. Problemas Pendientes y
Propuestas. Documento de circulación interna.
Wang-Iverson P. and M. Yoshida (Eds.) (2005), Building Our Understanding of
Lesson Study. Research for Better Schools, Inc. USA.
Yoshida, M. (2005). An Overview of Lesson Study. In P. Wang-Iverson and M.
Yoshida (Eds.), Building Our Understanding of Lesson Study. Research for Better
Schools, Inc. USA.

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 APPENDIX
1. Information about the VTR
Title: Sharing equally fragmentable objects
Topic: Comparison of fractions as a result of sharing equally fragmentable objects
Producer: LEM USACH Project, 2005. Headmaster: Dra. Lorena Espinoza. Faculty
of Sciences. USACH, Chile.
Context: Curricular Appropriation course on Fractions, Decimals and
Proportionality. Imparted by: Dr. Joaquim Barbé, Prof. Francisco Cerda
and Prof. Fanny Waisman. 2005.
Video recorder: Prof. Francisco Cerda
Video editors: Alfredo Carrasco and Francisco Cerda
Teacher: Isabel Becerra
School: Colegio Altair. Comuna Padre Hurtado. Santiago.
Grade: Fourth Year of Primary School
Date: May, 2005
2. Description of the Observed Class.
The teacher begins, in the initial moment, with an inventory of the activities carried
out in the previous two classes.
She presents 1 cardboard rectangle, she says "it is a whole" and folds it in 4 equal
parts to simulate 1 chocolate that is distributed among 4 people (task of the first
class). Every part is designated as 1/4.
Then, she presents 3 rectangles and folds each of them in 4 equal parts to simulate a
distribution of 3 chocolates among 4 people (task of the second class). A student
answers the question about how they would make it: "I would divide each chocolate
into 4 parts, and I would give 3 pieces to each person". The teacher makes the folds
and writes 1/4 in each part, that is to say, 4 times in each rectangle. A child writes in
the blackboard the result of the distribution: 3/4.
It draws our attention the fact that she makes 3 parallel folds in the first rectangle:

On the other hand, in the other 3 rectangles she makes two perpendicular folds:

Though the rectangles are of the same form and size, nobody questions the fact that
the same quantity of chocolate (1/4) is represented surfaces that are no t congruent.

61
In the central moment the teacher proposes a distribution of 12 chocolates among 3
friends. She writes 12:3 = 4, and she comments that each child receives 4 “full”3
chocolates.
Then she writes a "challenge" in the blackboard:
9 chocolate bars are distributed among 4 friends
¿How much chocolate does each one receive?
Children are assigned to teams of four. The teacher distributes 9 squares of paper to
each group, and she allows them to work freely.
We observe students using different techniques to accomplish the proposed task. The
recording allows us to distinguish among the work of three groups.
Group 1. We can see a child in great concentration, with his two hands in front,
moving his fingers as if he was counting them. Then he explains to his classmates: "2
for each one and the bar that remains is divided in 4 pieces" He makes two
perpendicular folds in a square to obtain 4/4. He says: "each one receives 2 wholes
and 1/4". Then he explains: “for you, 2, for me, 2 ... there are 8 bars. It remains 1: 1/4,
1/4...” He makes the gesture of distributing, folding the paper but without cutting it.
Group 2. A girl distributes 2 squares for each person inher group. She folds the ninth
square obtaining 4 equal parts, and she simulates distributing 1 part to each one (she
doesn’t cut it).
Group 3. A girl proposes to divide each chocolate into 4 parts and to give one of these
parts to each person. Thus, each person would receive 9/4 of the chocolate bar.
In this group another girl argues that each person will receive 2 bars and 1/4 of 1 bar,
following the same reasoning observed in the previous groups.
In another group they fold each square to obtain 9 equal parts.
The teacher listens to the children who divided each square into 9 equal parts, but
doesn’t comment on their technique.
The teacher organizes a summary where she confronts two techniques:
• To distribute first the whole objects and then to divide the remaining
object. The result is registered on the blackboard as: 2 + 1/4.
• To divide each object into 4 equal parts and then to distribute all 36
resultant parts. The result is registered as: 9/4.

The teacher asks if it is the same thing: 2 + 1/4 and 9/4.

3
In spanish, she says: “enterito”, using the same word that we use for whole number (número entero).

62
To show the second procedure, the teacher takes 9 squares, each one folded into 4
equal parts, and she indicates one of these parts as she counts them, to verify that they
are 9/4.
Some children argue that it is the same thing, because with 4/4 they make 1 whole (a
bar of chocolate), with 8/4 they make 2 wholes and with the last 1/4 they complete 2
wholes and 1/4. They never work with cut parts to show this equivalence.
Later they work on individual worksheets. The teacher allows them to continue the
team work.
The first activity proposes a distribution of 42 bars of chocolate among 6 children.
They have to anticipate if each child will receive more or less than a bar of chocolate
and have to write with numbers the amount of chocolate each child will receive.
A few children try to make the division 42:6, but they do not remember the procedure.
They say "2 in 6 fits 3 times" and they write 3. Then they say "4 in 6 fits once" and
they write 1. So, they write 31. Since it seems to be too much, they invert it, leaving
13.
In another group they decide to do the distribution with objects. They put their pencils
together until they have 42. They share them in 6 groups. A child says: “this way we
are going to finish tomorrow!”, but the girl who is sharing continues doing it. Finally
they count the pencils of each group and say: “7!”.
The children then work on another distribution of 5 objects among 6 people, with the
same questions.
The teacher organizes a summary, asking for the result of the first distribution. They
give the answer: 7. Some children say that they have divided and others that 6 times 7
is 42. They answer that each child gets more than 1 chocolate.
As for the distribution of 5 among 6, the pupils say that each person gets less than 1
bar. A pupil explains that in his group they divided all 5 chocolates in halves, with
which they would obtain 10/2. They gave a half to each of 6 persons, and then they
divided all 4 remaining halves to distribute again among the 6 persons... The teacher
listens but doesn’t comment on the technique that they used.
During the closing, already out of the time of the class, the teacher asks them to draw
conclusions:
"How much corresponds to each person if the quantity of objects to be distributed is
bigger than the amount of people? More than 1 or less than 1?" The children answer:
"More than 1"
"And if the amount of objects is smaller than that of people? ", the teacher asks. The
children answer that it would be less than 1.

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3. A workshop for teachers.
1. Watch the video and comment on it freely.
2. Questioning.
This phase deals with teachers solving problems related to the topic approached in
the class and analyzing the techniques that they used and the mathematical and
didactic knowledge that they have employed. If it is necessary, they complement
their knowledge.
Problem 1. In a meeting 17 people decide to order pizzas so that each person can
eat 1/6 of a pizza. How many pizzas do they have to order?
Problem 2. In another meeting 24 people order 5 pizzas of the same type of those
of the previous meeting. They distribute them in equitably and completely.
Determine if in this case every person will eat more or less pizza than in the
previous meeting.
Problem 3. Establish a sequence and explain it in order to present it to a fourth
grade class, presenting the following tasks:
To distribute 5 chocolates among 3 children
To distribute 1 chocolate among 6 children
To distribute 14 chocolates among 7 children
To distribute 2 chocolates among 4 children
3. To watch the video again and to stop it to discuss:
Initial moment:
To identify the mathematical tasks.
To justify the equivalence between 1/4 obtained by 3 parallel folds and by two
perpendicular folds in a rectangle of paper.
Central moment:
To identify the mathematical tasks.
To identify the techniques used by the children to solve the problem of
distribution of 9 among 4.
To justify the equivalence between 2 + 1/4 and 9/4, and to comment on the way in
which it was managed by the teacher in the observed class.
To identify the techniques used by the children to solve the problem of
distribution of 42 among 7.

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 To propose a reaction, on the part of the teacher, to the technique described by a
pupil to distribute 5 among 6 (to divide by the half).
Closing moment:
To determine what other aspects might be included in the closing of this class.
4. To compare the comments made during the first and the second time they have
seen the video.
5. To draw conclusions based upon the proposal contained in the video and upon the
way in which they habitually teach this topic.
6. Homework: To write a paragraph on the relation that the pupils can establish
between division in natural numbers and fractions, as quantification of parts of a
whole object.

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