ERIC Number: EJ1160009
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2017-Nov
Pages: 7
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1072-0839
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Repeating Decimals: An Alternative Teaching Approach
Appova, Aina K.
Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, v23 n3 p154-160 Nov 2017
To help middle school students make better sense of decimals and fraction, the author and an eighth-grade math teacher worked on a 90-minute lesson that focused on representing repeating decimals as fractions. They embedded experimentations and explorations using technology and calculators to help promote students' intuitive and conceptual understanding while building on their predictions, estimations, and rational number sense. To help address the diverse learning needs as well as the behavioral issues that math teacher observed with her students during instruction, they sought to target the process of small-group problem solving via problem posing, borrowed from "The Art of Problem Posing" (Brown and Walter 2005). Overall, these activities not only helped the students to learn to represent repeating decimals as fractions but also offered ample opportunities to improve students' procedural, computational, and conceptual knowledge, as well as problem-solving skills and motivation toward mathematics.
Descriptors: Mathematics Instruction, Middle School Students, Fractions, Mathematical Concepts, Grade 8, Concept Formation, Technology Uses in Education, Educational Technology, Handheld Devices, Calculators, Student Diversity, Small Group Instruction, Problem Solving, Cooperative Learning
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. 1906 Association Drive, Reston, VA 20191. Tel: 800-235-7566; Tel: 703-620-9840; Fax: 703-476-2570; e-mail: NCTM@nctm.org; Web site: http://www.nctm.org/publications/mathematics-teaching-in-the-middle-school/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Middle Schools
Audience: Teachers
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A