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Fractions of an Amount: Purposeful practice

I am more than a little obsessed with purposeful practice. For an activity to fit my definition of the phrase, it must meet the following five key principles:

  1. Students need to experience early success
  2. There must be plenty of opportunities to practice the key procedure
  3. The practice should feel different
  4. Opportunities must exist for students to make connections, solve problems and think deeper
  5. The focus is always on the practice

I use such activities both to help develop my students' understanding of a concept (e.g. I might use such an activity in the 3rd lesson of a 4 lesson sequence of lessons), or when reviewing a concept (e.g. I know my Year 9s have studied this topic before, and need more practice). For me, they offer the ideal form of effective differentiation. I discuss purposeful practice in Chapter 10 of my book, How I wish I'd taught maths, and during my podcast interview with Colin Foster.

Here are some of my favourite purposeful practice activities for this topic.

Contents

Median: cuisenaire rods and fractions keyboard_arrow_up
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For the full activity, please visit the post on Don Steward's Median Maths Blog here.

Median: fractions "of" keyboard_arrow_up
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For the full activity, please visit the post on Don Steward's Median Maths Blog here.