Easy Partition
Rose was 5 years and
9 months at the time that this video was made.
The Problem
You have 13 pieces of cotton candy and you would like to share them
among 3 people.
How many does each person get?
What To Look For In This Video
- After telling Rose only that 3 people are sharing 13 pieces of cotton candy, I ask her what she thinks the question will be. In a similar vein, I think it is also useful to have children make up problems for me to solve. Experiences like these strengthen their understanding of the structure of these problems.
- If this were Rose's first exposure to a partition problem, I would have chosen numbers so that the answer "came out even." Here she has to struggle with that 13th piece of candy. She clearly can model Easy Partition problems, so what she is actually getting from this experience is help with fractions.