Concept Teaching Game: Third Grade Fractions

Spoons—Practicing Equivalent Fractions

Grade Level: This game is best suited for 3rd grade.

Standards:

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.3.NF.A.3: Explain equivalence of fractions in special cases and compare fractions by reasoning about their size.

MP1 and MP6

3-6 players

Materials

• Equivalent Fraction Cards
• Spoons

Object of the game

Get four equivalent fraction cards and be the last player in the game.

Set up

1. Arrange the spoons in a circle in the center of the table. Make sure all students are able to easily grab the spoon.
2. Shuffle the deck of equivalent fraction cards.
3. Deal 4 cards to each student.

How to play

1. Students look at their cards and determine to themselves if they have any equivalent fraction cards already.
2. The dealer takes one card from the pile so that he/she/they now have 5 cards in their hand. They then place one card from their deck down and pass it to the next person. *this does not have to be the card that they just picked up.
3. The dealer continues to do this one card at a time.
4. The player to the left of the dealer picks up the discarded card from the dealer. Like the dealer, he/she/they removes one of the five cards from their hand and passes it facedown to the person to the left. He/she/they continues to do this as cards continue getting discarded to him or her.
5. This continues around the circle until the last player who places the discarded card in to the “trash” pile. The “trash” pile indicates that these cards are no longer in play for this round.
6. Once someone gets four of a kind, that is four equivalent fraction cards, he/she/they grabs a spoon from the center of a table.
7. Once someone sees that one person took the spoon, they must quickly move to grab a spoon even if they do not have four equivalent fraction cards.
8. The person left without the spoon earns a letter in the word S-P-O-O-N.
9. This game is played until one student spells the full word.

Four of a kind

Four of a kind

This game was adapted from Games4Gains.