Marna Wolak’s fifth grade students at Sanchez Elementary in San Francisco are gathered on the rug for a “number talk.” Wolak is getting her students thinking about fractions, noticing patterns and explaining their thinking to one another as a group before sending them off to work on a new topic – dividing whole numbers by fractions.
The problem for today deals with origami stars. Students are told they have six pieces of paper, but it only takes one fifth of a piece to make one origami star. How many stars can they make with six pieces of paper?
