Description

What our Multiply by a Whole Number or Fraction lesson plan includes

Lesson Objectives and Overview: Multiply by a Whole Number or Fraction teaches students how to multiply fractions by whole numbers and by other fractions. At the end of the lesson, students will be able to multiply a fraction by a whole number or fraction. This lesson is for students in 5th grade.

Classroom Procedure

Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the blue box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand.

Options for Lesson

Included with this lesson is an “Options for Lesson” section that lists a number of suggestions for activities to add to the lesson or substitutions for the ones already in the lesson. One optional adjustment to the lesson activity is to have your students create a different amount of problems to solve. For an additional activity, you could conduct a class “Fraction Bee” and have two teams of students do mental math to find the products of two fractions. You could also have your students create word problems for other students to complete as a quiz or in-class assignment.

Teacher Notes

The teacher notes page includes a paragraph with additional guidelines and things to think about as you begin to plan your lesson. This page also includes lines that you can use to add your own notes as you’re preparing for this lesson.

MULTIPLY BY A WHOLE NUMBER OR FRACTION LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES

Fractions and Whole Numbers

The Multiply by a Whole Number or Fraction lesson plan includes two content pages. The lesson begins by reviewing how to multiply a fraction by a whole number. To do this, you need to change the whole number to a fraction before multiplying.

To change whole numbers into fractions, you make the whole number the numerator and use 1 as the denominator. For example, the whole number 5 becomes 5/1. The whole number is the numerator and 1 is the denominator. This makes it easy to multiply fractions by whole numbers. For example, 5 x 2/3 = 5/1 x 2/3 = 10/3 = 3 1/3. The products of these problems can be mixed or whole numbers. Sometimes, you will need to reduce the fractions.

You could also use a shortcut, multiplying the whole number by the fraction’s numerator and keeping the same denominator. You can then change it into a mixed or whole number, reducing if necessary.

For example, let’s look at the problem 4 x 2/3. For this problem, you multiply the whole number (4) by the numerator of the fraction (2): 4 x 2 = 8. Next, keep the denominator as-is and change the product into a mixed number: 8/3 = 2 2/3.

It’s easy to multiply fractions by whole numbers! It’s also easy to multiply fractions by other fractions.

Multiplying Fractions by Fractions

To multiply a fraction by another fraction, you use almost the same process as when you multiply a fraction by a whole number. However, instead of the denominator being a 1, the denominator will be a different number. To solve these problems, you multiply the numerators and then the denominators.

For example, let’s look at the problem 4/5 x 2/3. To solve, first multiply the numerators: 4 x 2 = 8. Next, multiply the denominators: 5 x 3 = 15. This gives you a final answer of 8/15.

The lesson closes with a few other example problems that show how to solve these problems using the same steps. Always remember that you may need to reduce or change the product into mixed or whole numbers after multiplying. Knowing your multiplication facts well makes it much easier to multiply fractions by other fractions!

MULTIPLY BY A WHOLE NUMBER OR FRACTION LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS

The Multiply by a Whole Number or Fraction lesson plan includes three worksheets: an activity worksheet, a practice worksheet, and a homework assignment. You can refer to the guide on the classroom procedure page to determine when to hand out each worksheet.

CREATING PROBLEMS ACTIVITY WORKSHEET

Students will work with a partner to complete the activity worksheet. Each pair will cut apart each of the numbers, the equal sign, multiplication symbols, and the fraction bars printed on the worksheet. They will then work together to create at least 20 fraction multiplication problems, writing each of them down on the worksheet. They will then solve each problem.

MULTIPLYING PRACTICE WORKSHEET

For the practice worksheet, students will solve 24 fraction multiplication problems.

MULTIPLY BY A WHOLE NUMBER OR FRACTION HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT

The homework assignment asks students to solve eight word problems. Each word problem includes the word “of,” which often means to multiply.

Worksheet Answer Keys

This lesson plan includes answer keys for the practice worksheet and the homework assignment. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.