Day 2, Reflection, and Plan for Day 3

What I did for my second day with kiddos:

1. Started with the problem 1/2 + 1/3 (3 minutes of individual time) - I reminded them that making mistakes is ok, but not trying absolutely is not.
2. 3 minutes to partner share (during both independent and sharing I walked around and jotted down all the answers I saw)
3. I wrote all the answers on the board, then called the whole class's attention back to the front. I told them that I was noticing a number of different answers, and asked them what they thought about that. 
4. A few students basically made comments that they were unsure about their own answers and thought maybe there were mistakes. I happened to overhear one really great conversation during the partner sharing where one girl told her partner that she got 2/5 but that didn't make sense because that was too small - she mentioned cooking and how the cups work. I asked her to share her insight. The class agreed, so I asked if we could use this same logic to eliminate any other answers definitively. We were able to narrow it down some more :) - Someone also noticed that one of the answers was way too big (by similar logic), so we decided that couldn't be it either. 
5. A student asked to defend the answer 5/6 (this happened in every class - someone was just DYING to say how to do it! LOL). I had the student explain step by step, pausing and asking for clarification, asking for agreement, and calling on other students to restate reasoning. This took a long time, but there were some really nice moments where students started to realize how fractions work. Even my higher kids who totally knew exactly what to do in the procedure struggled to explain clearly why we need a common denominator and why we don't add denominators (the answer EVERY single one of them gave me the first time was basically, "because your answer isn't right that way"). 
6. I had prepared two more problems: 3/4 + 1/2 and 1 1/3 - 5/6. One of my classes wanted to do the "harder" problem, so they jumped right over the middle problem. They had done well in the explanations, and the idea of least common denominator had already come up through the conversation. The other classes did the middle problem. There was not enough time to finish a third problem today. 
7. Again, I had the students write what they learned today. I also told them that they could instead tell me what the most significant/helpful thing we did today was for them personally. 

Reflection:

     Many students said that this discussion was helpful for them, and my higher kids were some of the ones who said that they enjoyed the discussion (so they aren't bored out of their minds by talking about something that they basically already understand themselves). I have decided that it might be better to actually have them just discuss "How do you add and subtract fractions?" and come to consensus around that, and if they don't hit all of my key points that I think are the most important, I could just disagree and pose a problem that their "solution" doesn't fully address. This is my plan for my next class session on Monday (even though we have already talked about it).