Fraction problems

Today we had two DMIC problems that were about fractions.

Here is the first question - 

A bakery makes ⅛ strawberry cupcakes, ¼ vanilla cupcakes and ½ chocolate cupcakes.

If there are 50 cupcakes altogether, how many would there be of each flavour? What is the chance getting a chocolate one?

These drawings were from Janett's group. They used equal sharing to find out that 1/2 of 50 is 25, 1/4 of 50 made 2 boxes of 12 and 2 boxes of 13 (not equal!), and 1/8 of 60 wasn't equal either. Miss Ashley said to make the boxes equal, even if you have to leave some cupcakes out of it. So they found out that 1/4 of 50 was 48, which had 2 left over. They found out that 1/8 of 50 was 6, with 2 cupcakes left over there as well. 

With help from Fereti's group, we learnt that 50/2=25 was a faster way than equal sharing. Together we figured out what the number sentences/equations would be for the other cupcakes and wrote these. Then Miss Ashley challenged us to flip the divided bys into times tables and write that as well.

Then Miss Ashley changed the numbers and we had to only use times tables to figure it out. Then we had to write it two ways. It was easy now that we knew how to do it.

Here is the second question (a different group)

Jasmine is fundraising for her netball trip to Samoa. She has 60 tickets at $4 each. She sold half to her nana, ¼ to her uncle, ⅛ to her sister and ⅛ to her classmates. How many did each get? Who has the greatest chance of winning the prize?

Welsey's group shared how they solved the first two bits - 1/2 of 60 and 1/4 of 60. Some of us didn't understand why it made sense to divide by 2 when its talking about halves.

Junefia, Maria, Ana and Lily's group shared their drawing of how they tried to find 1/8 of 60, but again this wasn't a simple equation and it wasn't even. Wesley's group came close to figuring out that it was a decimal number, but wasn't sure what number. Miss Ashley helped out a little to help us figure out that it was 7.5 or 7 and a half per box.

Junefia's group wrote this. 

Earlier Lily had identified that 15 was half of 30 and this made sense because 1/4 was half of a 1/2. Miss Ashley helped everyone to realise that 1/8 was half of a 1/4, so they could have just halved 15 and solved it easily instead of drawing. 

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