The Rainbow Fish

Ann was  recently at Frenchville Primary School where she noticed a display based on the Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister, one of her favourite series of books.

The  following photograph shows the whole display but look closely at the next photo and you will see that the  scales on each fish are made from fractions of cup cake papers.

How many cup cakes wrappers were needed to make each fish Ann wondered.

The Problem
(Note the first  picture to follow has  scales that are ¼ of the paper and the second photo of scales shows scales that are 1/6  of the paper, select to match your learners.)

My friend, the year 1 teacher, has to buy cup cake papers in green, blue, red, pink, yellow, and silver so that her class can each make a fraction  rainbow fish. Each scale is the same size fraction and each fish will be the same. She  has 23 students in her class.

How many  cup cake papers will she need?

Note: John Van de Walle suggested that students should be encouraged to look at a fraction and visualise the whole from which it was taken so that they could work out what fraction is shown. With this in mind  encourage your students to identify and explain what fraction of the whole they think the scales are before they begin work. Select the class or group size to match the range of your students.