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Fraction teaching in Grade Four as intro to whole-brainedness
Waldorf education method for teachers and home-schoolers
Yesterday I was supporting an 11 year old with his fractions homework. I struggled with fractions at his age too.
Afterwards a new way to teach fractions came to me. It comes after all the practical demos with cutting brownies, pizza slices and pouring water in containers.
It pertains particularly to children challenged with the inner symbology of fractions. A well-known emotional aspect of children’s troubles with fractions is we leave behind dealing with only whole numbers. The “indivisible whole” can now be fractured, may exist only in pieces, which may be re-assembled into one whole again — or not.
This parallels the emotional quandary of many children of divorced-separated parents, The One Whole of the Family is broken. Humpty Dumpty has a great fall and “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again.”
Fractions in Grade Four poke at the child’s unconscious who holds on to putting the Family back together again — and cannot.
Can we make lemonade out of this sour lemon? I think we can.
Fractions have a numerator on top, a denominator on the bottom. This is EXACTLY analogous to what “locus of…
