Dividing Fractions for 6th Grade Mathematics
Teaching division of fractions often feels like a balancing act between procedural memorization and true conceptual clarity.In 6th grade mathematics, the struggle is real when you ask students to divide a fraction by another fraction. Many students have already built... read more
Teaching sixth grade unit rates without the division mix-up
Sixty miles on 2 gallons of gas. Ask a room of sixth graders for the unit rate and most will get to 30 quickly. Then ask a slightly different question, like how many gallons per mile, and a good third of the class will still write 30, because what they learned was... read more
Teaching sixth grade unit conversions with ratio reasoning
Every year somebody asks me why sixth graders are converting inches to feet again, when they did that back in fourth and fifth grade. It’s a fair thing to ask. The answer is that the skill looks the same on paper, but the thinking underneath it is supposed to... read more