Fractions

"Represent your thinking with a model and some numbers. Watch for things that happen over and over.

What happens when 4 kids share 3 pancakes? How much pancake will each kid get?

4 pancakes?

5 pancakes?

6 pancakes?

Write at least one observation about the relationship between kids and pancakes.

What is happening over and over?

What conjectures can you make about what you are noticing?"

The math words
march militantly
across
the paper.
brain parts freeze.
only algorithms
are roaming from cell to cell.
It was the regularity of patterns
that gave the answer.
It took 1 1/2 to get 3/4.


All I wanted was one.

I observe:

I can't draw you.
Dividing you leaves decimals
in my heart.
Synapses
sputter, zap, fizzle, and burn.
The chasms in my basal ganglia
collapse,
bridges
that go nowhere.

The silent words
benumb the hemispheres
in my mind.
Equal parts,
a fair share,
matter dished up
as cevelle de veau,
a side of sweetbreads.
consume
consumate,
conceal,
congeal.

If I am the numerator
and you the denominator,
and we are a mixed fraction,
what do we know?
That it is improper?
That we must make it common?

Do we divide?
Add?


Let the fractions roar!
Howl in their division.

I could cut the fourths to twelfths,
but what I really want
is two halves
to be one.

to model the fraction,
to make sense,
to conjecture,
and justify.

for less
to become more...

the freedom of the brain
to think
feel,
a whole.