Are you “cursed” by Math?

I read a lot of blogs via email. I love to see what other teachers are up to. The most common math concept that has been blogged about lately has been Fractions. I love Fractions now as a teacher, but as a student I am sure I found them confusing!

Meg at Fourth Grade Studio has been posting for a few weeks now all about her Fractions unit she is completing with her students. I have been reading her Fractions posts via email since they started. Her latest Fractions post involving student thinking on a number line got me thinking about how great that lesson would be to use as a pre-assessment of what my students already know about Fractions. 

I also got to thinking about my Fractions Unit introduction. I use the book “The Math Curse” by Jon Scieszka. In the book the narrator starts out on a normal Monday in Math class. Her teacher announces that everything could be seen as a math problem. The next day she wakes up and all day long she sees everything as a math problem. How long to catch the bus? The weight of something? etc. She feels she is cursed with math. 

This is how I am going to use this resource:
-read the story aloud to my 8th graders
-have them work in groups to solve the problems in the book
-at the end of the unit, their culminating task will be to create a math story similar to this to share with their reading buddies in Grade 3 to help them understand fractions. 

How do you make Fractions fun? interactive? make sense? 

Please comment below. I love to read all of your ideas.