DEMO TEACHING - FRACTION

Being a professional educator, it is common to practice our soft skills in front of many audience as well as to deliver the topic concisely, understandable and interactive.  Student participation is also a great concern to maximize the appreciation on the topic and ensure that retention of learning for the student is long term.

To train us in handling classroom with 50 students as a minimum, we are tasked to select topic from basic education program K to 12 and discuss it at least 20 minutes in the classroom.  This covers the preparatory activity until closing remarks of the topic. 

Based from the above, I have chosen the fundamentals and basic operation of fractions discussing what is fraction, how we can apply it in everyday life and how we can add, subtract, multiply and divide the fractions with similar and dissimilar denominator.  Further, all of this content was indicated in the prepared lesson plan for us to ensure that the flow of discussion can be presented smoothly and all important rules are stressed out to the class.

As a preparatory activity, I make the student realize the importance of fractions through practical examples.  I started it by the presenting flash cards of variety sliced pizza and asked the student to identify the fractions indicated in the visual representation.  Then, I ask the students again to cite circumstances, based from their own experiences, wherein fractions were used. 

I have defined the fraction as a numerical quantity that is not a whole number and this is express as (a/b) where a is numerator and b is denominator.  Whereas, numerator represents how many parts are being considered while denominator represents the number of equal parts in a whole.

Afterwards, I discussed the rules for the fundamental operations on fractions.  I elaborated that the sum/difference of two similar fractions is very easy; all we need to do is just copy the denominator and add/subtract the numerator while in case of different denominator, we first convert the fractions to similar fractions using least common multiple (LCM), and apply the same rule of similar denominator.  Further, multiplication of fraction is simply the product of numerator and denominator whereas; the division is similar as multiplication by reciprocal.

My professor commented that I should showcase mastery in the multiplication part of the topic and suggested to include application for the fractions as well as generalization in the lesson plan.  Despite of this, it was very fruitful discussion and I have learned a lot of this in this demo teaching.