The Classy Teacher: The One with the Fraction Tournament

Sometimes our plans for the week don't turn out like we planned. We have to move to Plan B. That is what happened to me this week with my sixth graders.

They had a quiz on Thursday wrapping up our study on adding & subtracting fractions. The plan was for them to work on Accelerated Math on Friday and be ready for something new on Monday. If you aren't familiar with Accelerated math it is all done on the computer and is a self paced program. We use it as an intervention tool at my school.

But then I received a message saying that we needed to avoid using chromebooks in our classrooms until after lunch. It was interferring with some testing that was going on in the mornings. Of course I have one sixth grade class before lunch so I needed a Plan B for that one class.

I wanted a way for them to get just a little more practice with fractions but I wanted it to be fun and enjoyable.

I printed off a single elimination bracket for 22 teams since I had 22 students.

I used my popsicle sticks to randomly place students on the bracket.

I didn't tell them we were doing this. After they finished their bell work Friday I simply projected the bracket onto the board using my Elmo.

Oh how the excitement grew immediately!

I pulled up a worksheet on my laptop from www.commoncoresheets.com to use for the questions.

Two students at a time would go to the board and race to finish a problem correctly. The students who were not racing at the time were expected to be working the problem on paper at their desk.

The kids loved it! And I was amazed!

Students who I didn't think were getting the concept of adding and subtracting fractions were advancing on the bracket. It's amazing what a little competition can do.

Normally we would not have had time to make it all the way to a winner but thanks to the testing going on I had this class a little longer than usual which allowed us to finish our competition.