Each group was given a cup of jelly beans (no, I didn't count them out first). Their first task was to count the beans to determine how many there were in total, as this would be their denominator. They then had to sort the jelly beans by colour, using each value as their numerator in a new fraction. For instance, if a group received 72 jelly beans in total, and 15 were pink, they could write this as 15/72. They did this for each of the five colours of jelly beans.
Once the beans were sorted and the fractions were written, the students had to write two equivalent fractions for each one. Whenever possible, I encouraged the students to use division to reduce their fractions. In the example above, both 72 and 15 are divisible by 3, so they could write a new fraction like 5/24. This was not always possible, however, and some groups had a denominator which was a prime number, so they had to turn to multiplication instead. Some of our denominators became quite large as a result! This wasn't a bad thing, however, as it was further support for the concept that the overall ratio of any colour does not change no matter how many pieces you cut each one into.
The students had fun working with an unexpected manipulative, and did a little pigging out at the end of class!
