Rational Numbers!

"One topic that is particularly difficult for students is fractions" (Bezuk and Bieck). I find this to be a very true statement in my own experience. Rose and Gabe do you agree? I really liked the three ideas these authors have on making fractions easier to learn for students. They are: "a. instruction should be meaning oriented rather than symbol oriented, b. instead of delivering knowledge in prepackaged form, instruction should encourage students to construct their own knowledge, and c. instruction should provide students with structured learning experiences to help them acquire essential conceptual and procedural knowledge" (Bezuk and Bieck). It is important to teach children that rational numbers are ratios. In order to teach rational numbers more effectively, I believe we as teachers need to rely less on the conventional abstract math symbols, and rely more on using concrete tools. For example, all the materials listed on page 124 in this article seem much more helpful than a simple fraction sign. Another thing I found interesting in this article is to use word names such as one half before using symbol names, which seems like common sense to me, but I did not think of this before. Rose and Gabe, what things did you find interesting in these articles? Have you seen any rational number instruction in your placement? I have not yet...