100 days Fraction, Decimal, and Percent Activity

For the 100 days of School, our math specialist provided this art integration activity from one of her many curriculum books. The activity has the students find the fraction, decimal, and percent of 100 pieces. Now, I know what you are thinking...100 tiny pieces + messy 6th graders = nightmare.

When I first saw the activity, the math specialist talked about having the students cut out the 100 pieces, and providing 10 different colors and how "of course this is easy to do in the hour time you are given." Needless to say, I was not excited about these instructions. However, the activity sounded like a good one that just needed some modifications.

So instead of having the kids cut out the pieces, we (an amazing special ed IA and a room mom) pre-cut 100 pieces out of 5 different colors. In order to make our lives easier we gave each kid the same amount of colors, however we had them mix and match on the 100 days to make sure they still had 100 pieces but different quantities.  To make it more challenging for those kids that were ready for it, I took away some pieces or added some in order to make the fractions harder.

After the students calculated the F.D.P. and I checked over it, we had the students create a mosaic of their choice.

Even with all these modifications, the students still DID NOT finish in 1 hour. However, we did spend 15 minutes on a morning problem so I only gave them about 45 minutes to complete the activity. So I had the students take home the art projects and finish gluing. Unfortunately, I did not get pictures of the completed product.

Can you tell this is flappy bird?