The Doorbell Rang: Lesson Plan for Teaching Fractions

Math picture books can be a valuable resource for introducing concepts, promoting skills and extending understanding. The best math picture books will help teachers convey that math is a part of life and is for everyone.

Pat Hutchins’ The Doorbell Rang is excellent for teaching fractions concepts, though it does not explicitly use the word fractions, neither does it show any fraction numbers. In this classic picture book, children learn about fractions through the sharing of cookies. Two children start off having twelve cookies to share. As more friends arrive, the cookies must be divided into smaller and smaller portions. Through simple repetition and engaging illustrations, young readers grasp the concept of equal sharing. Suitable for kindergarten and early elementary grades.

Here is the rough outline for a lesson plan that you can modify to suit your students specific needs or to match where they are at with understanding fractions, whether they are new to the concept or already have some knowledge and skills.

Suitable for K-2 (simple read aloud, with just the minds on part), or (3-5 with full lesson), or grade 6 (for gap closing or deepening understanding of equivalent fractions).

Materials

A copy of The Doorbell Rang
Manipulatives for counting (counters, cubes, tiles)
Worksheets PDF, Editable (Google Doc)

Minds on

Focus attention and set purpose for listening by saying something like this: In this story Ma bakes some cookies, Victoria and Sam must share the cookies fairly, but more and more people keep showing up to their house! Listen to see how they share the cookies as more people arrive.
Read the story aloud.
Ask questions based on their reactions as they listened. So, if someone said “Oh no!” when the doorbell rang again, ask why they responded that way – they will reveal their understanding that the portion size is getting smaller. Ask what else this story tells us about fractions. Record what they already know.
Hand out twelve counters to pairs of students. Have them share the counters based on the number of people as the story progresses. Have them record their thinking on the worksheet.

Action

The story does the math for each scenario when there are twelve cookies but ends when grandma shows up with lots more cookies. In this part of the lesson, have students determine how many cookies each person will get if there are 24, 36, or 48 more cookies. As an extension, or a parallel task for students who can already divide without counters, have them share larger quantities like 60 or 72 cookies.

Consolidation

Ask questions that will draw out an understanding of the following key concepts:

The more parts there are the smaller the size of each part.
Fractions can be parts of a whole object (like a pizza) or parts of a set (like a batch of cookies).
We can tell portions of a whole by sharing fairly.

Sample questions:

What math did we do? Sample response: “we shared the counters equally to find out how many cookies each person will get”, “we divided the number of cookies by the number of people there are”.

What do we understand about fractions? Sample responses: “each person must get the same number of cookies”, “the more people there are, the fewer cookies each person will get”.