Lesson 11

A Bigger Piece

Lesson Purpose

The purpose of this lesson is for students to compare the size of halves and fourths of the same shape and understand that partitioning a shape into more equal pieces creates smaller pieces.

Lesson Narrative

In previous lessons, students partitioned shapes into halves and fourths and identified “a half,” “a fourth,” and “a quarter,” of a shape. In this lesson, students build on this work by comparing the size of halves and fourths of same-size shapes. Students explain that for the same shape, a fourth is smaller than a half. In later grades, students will generalize that for any whole, splitting it into more pieces creates smaller size pieces. At this point, they only need to understand the relative size of halves and fourths of the same shape.

  • Action and Expression
  • MLR7

Activity 1: Which is Bigger?

Learning Goals

Teacher Facing

  • Compare the size of halves and fourths of the same shape.
  • Understand that for halves and fourths, partitioning a shape into more equal pieces creates smaller pieces.

Student Facing

  • Let’s compare the size of halves and fourths.

partitioned rectangle

partitioned circle

Required Materials

Required Preparation

Activity 3:

  • Place 4–6 different geoblocks into a bag that is not see-through for each group of 2 students.

CCSS Standards

Addressing

Lesson Timeline

Warm-up 10 min
Activity 1 15 min
Activity 2 10 min
Activity 3 15 min
Lesson Synthesis 10 min
Cool-down 0 min

Teacher Reflection Questions

When do your students feel successful in math? How do you know?

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