At Corwin-Press I published an article titled “Rethinking Fraction Division: One of the Hardest Topics to Teach and Learn“.
If you are wondering, “Well, why do we invert and then multiply?” or if you are having a hard time to come up with a situation illustrating fraction division in a way that’s meaningful to a 4th, 5th, or even a 6th grader, rest assured you are not alone (Borko et al., 1992; Philipp, 2000): fraction division is probably the hardest elementary topic to teach. Recently, a seasoned professional development provider was unable to come up with a real world example for a group of upper elementary teachers.
The reasons why students (and sometimes teachers) have difficulties with fraction division are many, most of which I can’t expand on in a blog post (for detailed information, see my book, Planting the Seeds of Algebra, 3-5). However, I name some in that post and then develop two below.
Read all at CorwinPress.
