Lesson: Birthdays at the Zoo

Play the video “Animal Nutrition Center.” Then, before or after reading the article, spark a discussion based on the following questions:

• What was the coolest or most interesting cake you’ve ever seen? Describe it.
• If you were to throw a party for your pet or another animal, what food or drink items would you serve and why?
  
• Is it important to keep track of the amounts and kinds of things that we eat? Explain.

• If I offered you a $10 bill or two $5 bills, which would you take and why? (Answers will vary but students should recognize that these amounts are equal and have the same value.)
• $10 is equivalent to, or has the same value as, two $5 bills.
• What other combination of bills can you use to get $10? (Answers will vary.)
• Just like you can use different sets of bills to create equivalent values, you can also create equivalent fractions.
  
• Today we will use area models to show how we can find equivalent fractions.

• Why was one horizontal line drawn instead of one vertical line to split the rectangles in the model? (If one vertical line was drawn, the fraction model would not have been separated into 6 equal parts.)
• Could you have used more than one vertical line? (Yes, if you drew one line down the center of each rectangle, you could have also divided the model into 6 equal parts.)
• Could you change this model to create other equivalent fractions? If yes, which fractions? (Yes; answers will vary.)
• As you find equivalent fractions, will the denominator always increase? (No, sometimes you will work with larger fractions that can then be simplified into smaller equivalent fractions.)

Have students complete problems 1 through 4 on page 9 of the article.

Skills Sheets: Level Down: Equivalent Fraction Models (3.NF.A.3.A) | On Level: DynaDash: Equivalent Fractions With Area Models (4.NF.A.1) | Level Up: Adding Fractions with Unlike Denominators (5.NF.A.1)

SEL (Social-emotional learning activity/prompt): The Brookfield Zoo likes to make special birthday cakes for their animals. Have students write about a time when they made someone feel special and how that made them feel in return.

Dynamath@Home: Have students cut a sheet of paper into 4 strips. Using vertical folds, fold one of the strips in half, another strip into fourths (fold in half, then fold in half again), and another into eighths (fold in half, fold in half again, then fold in half again). The last strip will not be folded.  Then have students trace the fold lines on each strip and label the unit fractions. Have them use these strips to find different equivalent fraction sets.