Building Educator Content Knowledge: Dig into Important Fraction Concepts to Increase Student Achievement

Description
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This pilot course dives into the content of fraction content knowledge. One of the more noticeable shifts in college- and career-ready standards was emphasizing how fractions fit into the larger number system. Traditional curricula and instruction, and even current aligned curricula, fail to communicate one of the most critical points about fractions: fractions are numbers. Research has consistently shown the downstream impacts for students of this fundamental oversight in curriculum and instruction. Many students struggle in middle school and high school because of their lack of understanding of basic fraction concepts. To help all students be successful, educators will dig into these fractions concepts.

Course Details

Start Date: 10/06/2020
End Date: 11/16/2020
Duration: 6 weeks
Cost: free/pilot
Primary Audience: Teachers of grades 1-5
Certificate: A certificate showing 12 hours of professional learning is available up course completion. Please reach out to your school district to ensure they will accept it.

In this virtual, self-paced course, we will unpack the definition of a fraction and think about how powerful understanding fractions and how they are built out of unit fractions can be for teachers and their students. Participants in this course will have the opportunity to:
- Learn about fraction concepts.
- Think about the standards and progression of learning in 1st through 5th grades that leads students to math success.
- Do math in order to uncover important ideas.
- Analyze student thinking of the important fraction concepts.
To successfully complete this course and earn your certificate showing 12 hours of professional learning, you must complete the following:
- Take the pre-survey
- Watch all videos
- Complete all embedded interactive activities
- Submit all the assignments
- Participate in discussion boards
- Take the post-survey
Because this is a self-paced course, you have the freedom to complete the course within a few days or within the six weeks time frame. However, our recommended pacing is that you spend approximately three hours on each of the four modules over the span of four weeks.
Module 1: Understanding Fractions as Numbers

By the end of the module, you will:
- Understand the importance of defining a fraction as a number
- Consider student thinking and downstream implications for understanding fractions as numbers
Module 2: Reasoning About the Value of Fractions

By the end of the module, you will:
- Understand how fundamental understanding of unit fractions is to the fraction progression
- Consider student thinking and downstream implications for understanding fraction value based on unit thinking
Module 3: Comparing Fractions; Reasoning About Magnitude

By the end of the module, you will:
- Understand how reasoning about fraction magnitude can unite number learning into a continuous process, one that includes fractions as well as whole numbers.
- Consider prerequisite understanding and downstream implications of students’ reasoning about fraction magnitude.
Module 4: Early Reasoning About Equivalence

By the end of the module, you will be able to:
- Understand two fractions as equivalent if they are the same size, or the same point on a number line.
- Express whole numbers as fractions, and recognize fractions that are equivalent to whole numbers.

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