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5-Bars and Fraction Bingo (equality)

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Materials: 5-Bars and Fraction Bingo mat for each person and markers

Place a transparent 5-Bars mat on the overhead to illustrate 5-Bars Match-Up and cover the Fraction Bingo discs on the upper half with a sheet of paper. Each player should have one of these mats and some markers. Select an arbitrary transparent bar and place it on the overhead to illustrate the first play of the game. Any player having a bar on their mat with the same shaded amount can place a marker off to the side of the bar. The first player to get a marker beside each of their 5 bars wins the game.

After someone wins the game, you may want to ask them to describe each of their five bars as you check the equivalent ones that were selected for the game. Discuss the major concepts involved in this game, which are equality and the part-to-whole concept of a fraction. Ask the players to make some observations regarding the bars on their mats. Here are some possible comments: the bars can be used to show equalities, such as, a bar with 1 shaded part out of 3 is equal to a bar with 2 shaded parts out of 6; inequalities can be seen; the bars are the same size (length) as the actual Fraction Bars, so students can place each bar that is selected onto the mat for comparisons; pairs of bars can show differences, for example, on the above mat, the difference in the shaded amounts of the blue bar and the red bar is 1 part out of 12. You might point out that the orange bar is in the center of the five bars on each mat to help in making comparisons between the orange bar and the other four bars. Discuss the Fraction Bingo game on the mat and illustrate this game by selecting a yellow transparent bar with 2 parts shaded. Anyone having a yellow disc with two parts shaded or any other disc with the same amount of shading can place a marker on their disc. Discuss the fact that it is not as easy to compare the shaded amounts of the wedged shaped parts of two discs as it is to compare the shaded parts of two bars, and that when playing Fraction Bingo, it is helpful to use the five bars at the bottom of the mat to determine equalities. Play this game by selecting transparent bars at the overhead and having players place markers on their discs. The first player to obtain three markers in a row, column or diagonal wins.

Ask each person to compare the front and back sides of their mats. Some will notice that the fractions on the back side of the mats match the fractions for the bars and discs on the front side. So the 5-Bars and Fraction Bingo mats can be used in the following ways: playing the game with Fraction Bars on either the front side or the back side of the mats; or playing the game with the fraction playing cards on either the front or back sides of the mats.

Group Activities

These mats can be used for several types of activities once fractions are introduced: (a) Two people hold a mat vertically between them and while one names the fractions for the bars or discs on the front of the mat, the other person checks the fractions on the back; (b) Using the front side of the mat, a person writes down the sums and differences of the fractions for two adjacent bars and then checks the results from the back of the mat.

This group of students is playing 5-Bars and the teacher has just asked a question such as, "Does anyone have a bar with 3 out of 4 parts shaded or another bar with the same shaded amount?"

Photo courtesy of Herb Moyer

Ordering Information for Activity/Game Mats